Remnant of a Carnival
by GradationAir87
Summary: When Shirou destroyed the Grail, he wasn't expecting it to grant his wish anyways by turning into a rocket and spiriting him away. In a new world, filled with monsters called Grimm and superheroes called Huntsmen, he's finally able to pursue his dream to become a hero! Of course, Grail-kun isn't going to make it easy for him. Semi-serious Carnival Phantasm crossover!
1. Chapter 1

"_Kiritsugu… Have I become a Hero?"_

Emiya Shirou woke up confused.

Was that it?

Was that truly the end of the Holy Grail War? Had he… won?

His memories of the last week were kind of a blur, so he decided to sit back and think it all through for a minute to get things straight.

It had started with his attempt to take three beautiful women out on three separate dates, all on the same day and at the same time.

In hindsight, not his smartest move ever, but he almost had gotten away with it – no, uh, that made it sound like he had done something wrong. He hadn't almost gotten away with it, he had almost _made everyone happy._ Yeah, that sounded better.

It hadn't worked, however, and considering that one of his three sort-of-girlfriends was King Arthur, it had ended up with him taking a full powered blast from Excalibur to the face. Oops. Well, she forgave him in the end, as had they all, and, you know. Live and learn, right? Next time, he would make them happy for sure!

Then there was the first battle for the Grail, a grand prix featuring seven Servants and one golden jerk. He had actually won that battle, by projecting a legendary holy sword for the mundane purpose of extending his reach and crossing the finish line faster – he could have ended it right there, and realized his wish of becoming a hero, but his damn vehicle had eaten all his money!

No, he went with the more immediate priority, and instead used the omnipotent wish-granting device that was his prize to refill his pocket change. _Good call, Shirou, _he mentally congratulated himself with a nod.

Apparently, that wish wasn't enough to fully satisfy the Grail. The battles had continued. The second round, he hadn't even had a chance – he and Saber were eliminated by some sort of Berserker-Lancer team up (though Lancer definitely seemed to be getting the worse end of that deal) as they were leaving a restaurant. Unfair, he thought.

Luckily for him though, Illya also used the wish she won for something completely reasonable and practical – a battery for her video game controller. The Grail, for some reason, still demanded a greater wish.

Which had led to the final round.

What had begun as a friendly game show quickly became an all-out brawl. Eight Heroic Spirits and the powerful magi that had summoned them did battle, and somehow, at the end of it, he was the last one standing. Implausible, perhaps, but he had to fulfill his dream and become a hero to make people happy! He wasn't going to let anyone stand in the way of that goal, not even monsters like Heracles and Gilgamesh! On the bright side, the King of Heroes seemed to use his Gate of Babylon as the answer to pretty much everything he dealt with, and when Archer had started summoning weapons as well, in a suspiciously similar way to how Shirou himself did, his reality marble (which he had recently discovered he apparently possessed, thanks to hanging around with Archer so much) had been filled with all sorts of fun new toys.

So, exhausted and badly beaten after fighting his way through a gaggle of legendary heroes, he casually once more projected Caliburn, an incredibly powerful Noble Phantasm, completely ignored the protests of two of his (badly injured) girlfriends and his little sister, and used it to destroy the Holy Grail!

That would serve it right for making everybody fight over it, and definitely wouldn't invalidate the sacrifices of everybody who had striven for it so earnestly! Everybody including, to clarify once more, his girlfriend and partner Saber, and his girlfriend and classmate Rin, and his adorable little sister Illya.

Who needed wishes, anyways? Probably not them.

Right. All of that made perfect sense. But what was really confusing was what had happened _next, _and directly led to his current circumstances. Rather than have the good graces to explode, like most things would when hit with Caliburn, the holy cup split in two and released a strange anthropomorphic cat woman thing.

Shirou narrowed his eyes a bit as he remembered. Yeah, that was pretty weird, even for him.

He'd asked the cat thing what it was, which he thought was a fairly polite response given the circumstances. It had responded by letting out an unholy screech, and then the two halves of the Grail began to glow and immediately transformed into a giant purple rocket ship, and then a horde of hundreds more little cat women appeared out of _nowhere_ and swept him up in a stampede before he could react, depositing him inside the rocket.

The shock, combined with his shortage of prana finally catching up to him, had caused him to pass out. His last thought before oblivion took him was whether he had finally fulfilled his old man's dream and become a hero.

Still lying on his back in said rocket, he reached up and scratched his head in thought. He tried thinking about what had happened from other angles, tried to rationalize everything. He took a look around the interior of the ship, and noted that the cat women were nowhere to be found.

Nope, everything still made no sense. Oh well, guess the world had just gone crazy.

Well, there was nothing for it, he supposed. When he'd woken up, the rocket was no longer moving, so… time to find out where he was.

He slowly pulled himself to his feet, stretched a bit, took off the ridiculous yellow helmet he had still been wearing from playing the Balloon game, and finally made his way out of the Super Flying Holy Grail Rocket.

o-o-o-o-o

Headmaster Ozpin, of Beacon Academy, took a sip of his hot chocolate.

He stood next to Glynda Goodwitch, his deputy headmistress, before one of the giant windows framing his office at the top of Beacon's tallest tower.

Far in the distance, but still easily visible from his tower, somewhere in the middle of the Emerald Forest, a thin plume of smoke rose into the air.

Ozpin presumed that the source of the smoke was, in fact, the garishly painted rocket that he had just seen plummet from the sky before crashing into the woods.

He took another sip.

"Well. You don't see that every day."

Glynda looked more concerned. "You don't think that… thing… was manned, do you? It looked like a pretty rough landing."

She was putting it lightly. It hadn't even slowed down as it approached the ground, and had vanished into the trees still pointed nose down. Still, there hadn't been any visible explosion, which ruled out some kind of missile attack. Perhaps it was manned after all?

Ozpin let out a hum as he considered. "Well, it couldn't hurt to go take a look. At the very least, we'll need to clean up the wreckage before the initiation test next week. Might as well take the excuse to start planting the hidden cameras for it as well."

With a nod from Glynda, the two professors began to make their way to the Bullhead docks.

o-o-o-o-o

Everything was green.

Huge trees towered above him, a mixture of evergreens and more deciduous looking ones. None that he immediately recognized, but he'd never really studied botany. All were the exact same color, however, regardless of species – a rich, dark green, matching the thick grass and the plentiful shrubs dotting the ground.

The surrounding area appeared to be somewhat clear from the shockwave of his crash landing, providing a limited view through the canopy of the trees, but aside from some cliffs a fair distance away, there were no real landmarks he could see.

Behind him, there was a soft sound, like the tinkle of shattering glass. It was accompanied by a blinding radiance. Shirou spun around, hand shielding his eyes.

When the glow faded, the rocket was gone. In the small crater where it had landed, instead, was a strange looking creature composed of a sludge so purple it was almost black – or perhaps so black that he perceived it as purple. It had a head crested with several strange protrusions, set atop an amorphous _blob_ of a body with more small tendrils branching off, which occasionally belched out small puffs of purple smoke. From its almost cartoonish mouth, set in a too-wide smile, a steady flow of a lighter purple sludge continuously poured out, dribbling down the creature's front before being reabsorbed into its body. Above its head floated what appeared to be a miniaturized black hole, a void in space that seemed to devour all light, with a luminous violet event horizon.

Shirou nodded in recognition. "Oh, hey, Grail-kun. Where am I?"

The creature spoke, if it could be called speaking. Its mouth didn't move at all, but it bobbed its head up and down rapidly and somehow emanated a voice that was _far_ too childish, high pitched, and happy sounding for such a vile-looking abomination.

"You're so hopeless, Shirou-kun. Fufufufu," it chuckled. "Isn't it obvious? Your wish has been granted, Emiya Shirou. Of course, if you're unhappy with this world, there's always… the _other _way. Fufufufu."

Shirou grimaced, thinking back to his last conversation with the manifestation of all the world's evil, and more specifically the knife it had given him. The one his reality marble had catalogued under the name "Hero Creation Kit," a blade that promised to make him a hero for the low price of killing one million people.

His grimace lasted only a moment, before he suddenly realized the implication in the sludge monster's statement. His eyes widened.

"My wish… you mean, here, I can become a hero?"

The creature just stared back at him with the unblinking, beady little black voids it used as eyes. If anything, its unholy smirk grew slightly wider. After a brief, awkward moment of silence, Grail-kun suddenly dissolved into a puddle that rapidly sank into the ground.

Shirou shrugged off the strangeness of the creature, his eyes shining. He'd done it! He was finally going to become a real hero!

And all it took to get here was his own forceful abduction away from everyone he knew and loved, to what was implied to be a different world entirely, with nothing but the tattered clothes on his back to his name and no guarantee that there were even people here, let alone that he would be able to communicate with them!

He then paled slightly. Perhaps his wish was a little too vague after all. Some of those worries were probably unfounded, the Grail wouldn't screw him over _that _badly, but – oh God.

Saber was going to kill him. Rin was going to kill him. Sakura would probably forgive him outwardly, and then leave giant phallic worms in all his food for the rest of his life. Which would be short, because Saber and Rin were going to kill him.

Unless Illya got to him first, chopped his arms and legs off so he could never leave her again, and/or transferred his soul into an inanimate teddy bear that she would never let go of again.

He let out a small, frightened whimper, and sat down heavily on the soft forest grass as he contemplated the numerous ways all the women in his life would express their displeasure with him for abandoning them, even if it was _technically _not entirely his fault. Maybe it was a good thing that he was trapped a world away from them; it might spare him their ire.

A few moments later, he was distracted from imagining all the different tortures a sufficiently imaginative magus like Illya could inflict upon him by a rustling in the bushes surrounding his little impromptu clearing.

For a minute, he thought it was Grail-kun coming back to talk to him again, due to the similar pitch-blackness of the thing that pushed its way into the clearing, but the differences became quickly apparent as it came into view.

The overall shape of the beast was somewhat lupine, especially the head and tail, but strangely humanoid as well, giving the impression that the beast was able to operate equally well either on all-fours or as a biped. From most of its joints, bone-white spikes protruded, and all four limbs were equipped with vicious looking claws. Perhaps its most prominent feature, however, was the bony faceplate that covered its wolf-like head, marked with blood red streaks and surrounding a pair of eyes that glowed a baleful orangish-red.

It sniffed heavily at the air as it entered the clearing, its maw falling open into a doggy grin as it apparently found what it had been scenting for.

Shirou, who'd always had a strong nose for magecraft, smelled the creature in turn. It smelled – of mold and rot, of the acrid scent left over after an explosion, of spilled blood – of death, or destruction.

The appearance of the monster, for it could only be called a monster, instantly snapped Shirou out of his funk. Of course, this must be why he was sent here!

He knew the Grail wouldn't let him down! If the alternative was killing a million people, he would gladly become a hero by killing monsters instead! His eyes once more shone with idealism.

Interestingly enough, as if in response to his shifting mood, the monster halted in its slow stalk towards him. It sniffed at the air again as if confused.

The beast's hesitation meant nothing to Shirou.

"_Trace, On!" _he uttered, cycling od through his magic circuits to convert it into prana and then flooding that prana throughout his body to perform the mystery "Reinforcement," – or whatever complicated words Rin liked to use when she was trying to impress him by acting smart.

Basically, he turned on his superpowers.

His strength, durability, and speed were all augmented by the spell, one of the only spells he'd ever been very good at. His right arm lit up with a neon green glow, his circuits shining through his skin and the remains of his clothing, as he performed his second spell, the one that truly distinguished him as a magus – something that only he was capable of, thanks to the unique nature of his soul: Tracing.

In his hands, coalescing from a shower of blue sparks and pure white light, appeared Caliburn. One of his favorite swords, once pulled from a mighty stone by King Arthur herself. The Sword of Selection, the Golden Sword of the Victorious, meant to be wielded only by the rightful king of England. For some reason, perhaps his close bond with Saber, it resonated with his soul like few other swords did.

It was basically his go-to projection at this point. Overkill in most cases, yeah, and perhaps a little disrespectful to the sword itself to be used for such mundane purposes as, say, extending his reach a little bit, but to be fair that was a pretty important race that he really needed to win.

And if anyone asked, no, he had never projected it just to be able to reach over and flick off a light switch from the comfort of his bed.

But anyways, needless to say, it should be more than enough to deal with the monster in front of him.

It snarled at him, shying away slightly from the soft holy light given off by the sword, but chose to charge forward in an attempt to cut the light off at the source.

Shirou thought back to his training with Saber, which in hindsight had never included lessons on how to deal with angry giant wolf monsters, but that fact didn't really bother him. After all, if the charge it was currently performing was indicative of its top speed, it didn't hold a candle to the King of Knights.

When added to the years of accumulated history and skill that the sword had been through, skill that Shirou was able to tap into and utilize for himself… Shirou when using Caliburn could fight like an admittedly very pale, fake imitation of Saber herself. But when the original was as amazing as Saber was, an imitation with even a small fraction of that majesty was still a force to be reckoned with in its own right.

The monster didn't stand a chance.

It lunged forward, claws outstretched. Shirou easily slipped down and to the side in a smooth dodge, bringing the sword up into a draw cut against the monster's hide just under its outstretched forelimb as he did so.

He wasn't sure how effective he expected the attack to be against the monster, but he wasn't _really_ surprised when the beautiful sword sliced into the creature like a hot knife through… not even butter. Perhaps a better analogy would be like a knife, hot or otherwise, through smoke.

The creature was nearly bisected, only the fact that Shirou had held off on fully committing to a swing saving it from that fate, but still. Sliced three quarters of the way in half, the monster fell dead to the ground at the end of its lunge.

Shirou noted idly that its insides were a uniform, vibrant red, with no discernable bones or other vital features visible, before its corpse started to give off a black smoke – also not so dissimilar from that produced by Grail-kun – as its body slowly began to dissolve.

He looked down on the corpse in triumph. One monster down. One step closer to being a hero.

Another rustling from the bushes caught his attention, however. Again, he wasn't really surprised. Wolves did tend to hunt in packs, after all.

The creatures appeared in a steady trickle over the next minute or so. The total number that had chosen to investigate his small clearing numbered perhaps twenty, in the end, but none of them showed restraint enough to wait for all of their pack-mates to finish arriving before they chose to attack.

It was honestly trivial. Every few seconds, one or two more monsters would charge at him, each one easily dispatched by a single dodge and swing. His greatest difficulty was in maneuvering around the clearing such that he didn't become bogged down in the slowly growing amount of dissolving corpses.

It helped that he was using a Noble Phantasm to cut them down, of course, but he couldn't help but feel at his current level of training and conditioning, combined with his reinforcement, he could have held his own with even a mundane blade if he reinforced that as well. If he'd withheld from the reinforcement of his own body, however, he would have certainly been in trouble. Was that why he was here? Was the local populace incapable of fighting back against these monsters?

You couldn't be a hero without someone to save, after all, someone to make happy, so there must have been people here somewhere, if the grail had truly granted his wish.

The lack of snarling was what tipped him off to the fact that there were no monsters remaining, and none of his senses picked up any clues that more were approaching. He smiled earnestly. Every one of his instincts told him that putting down these creatures was a good thing.

It was then that his ears picked up the sound of turbines rapidly approaching. Well, the things he'd just fought certainly didn't have the opposable thumbs he figured it would take to build and operate aircraft, so he assumed that whatever approached would be some of the people of this world that he was here to save.

He dismissed his projection of Caliburn, not wanting to appear threatening or dangerous to whoever he might meet – and then waited, in the middle of the clearing filled with the bodies of the giant wolf monsters he'd just disemboweled, for them to arrive.

It didn't take long.

The aircraft, like the trees, and the monsters – alright, everything he'd seen here so far except for Grail-kun – was unfamiliar to him. Like a mix between a helicopter and a plane, with a bulbous forward cabin and a thin rear tail, but propelled by huge jet engines that, as he watched, rotated to point down vertically, supporting the vehicle in a hover above his own landing site.

A door on the side of the aircraft swung open, and two people jumped out, landing nimbly on the ground without even a hint of a stumble. And they were people, easily recognizable as such. Humans.

Shirou raised his eyebrows slightly at their landing. The aircraft was still hovering around ten meters in the air, just above the canopy. The fall would have been possible for someone like him, someone using magecraft to reinforce their body, but a normal human would have shattered most of their bones on impact. Well, there went his theory about the locals being incapable.

He stood casually as they approached him, still slightly worried about the language barrier, and observed the pair.

The one that initially drew his attention was a woman, no older than his caretaker, Taiga, and with the same youthful good looks that made guessing an exact age impossible. She had light blonde hair, green eyes, and a stern expression on her face, the combination sending a thrill of panic through him as he once more thought of Saber and how mad she must be at him.

On the other hand, she had on a pair of thin glasses, wore a white top and a black pencil skirt with black stockings, was noticeably… _curvier _than Saber was, and carried a riding crop in one hand. The ensemble was completed with a black and purple cape. Another involuntary shudder went through him as he realized the similarities to Rider, who would no doubt act as a very capable agent in making Sakura's own displeasure with him known. A quick analysis of her weapon told him it was collapsible, somehow without compromising structural integrity.

To his nose, even from a distance, she smelled faintly… spicy. There was something about her, or something she carried on her, that somehow smelled distinctly like cinnamon, mint, salt, and many others that he couldn't quickly distinguish. Underlying it all was a hint of ozone. It was actually quite interesting – he normally didn't pick up such a variety of scents around someone unless they carried around a large variety of different mystic codes, like when Rin chose to walk around with a full arsenal of prana-infused jewels.

Walking ahead of the woman, ever so slightly, was a middle-aged man with silvery-grey hair and a pair of dark spectacles resting low on his face. He had sharp features, and wore an ensemble of all dark green, including pants, coat, vest, shirt, and a scarf. He smelled – well, he smelled like chocolate, but that was a more mundane type of smell, and beneath that his prana smelled _deep, _like a deep well or an ancient ruin, but without any of the dankness, moisture, or dustiness one might expect from such a place. He carried a cane, which was actually more interesting to Shirou than the man himself was.

The cane was _old. _Perhaps not compared to some of the Noble Phantasms he'd recorded in his vast spiritual collection, but it was centuries old, and had been passed down in a line unbroken for its entire history, each man to have wielded it bearing a suspiciously similar name and using a nearly identical style – a style that incorporated heavy, diverse use of magecraft – until falling into the hands of its current wielder. Ozpin. It was an incredibly potent mystic code, and even beyond that, he could see that it had been crafted from the pieces of another, far older weapon – a staff with a lineage much like the cane's own. While he couldn't quite grasp the full history of the weapon the cane no longer was, it certainly was much older than the cane itself by _millennia_.

Interesting.

"Well, I can't say this is quite what I expected to find. Impressive showing, young man," said the man in green, Ozpin, as he surveyed the still rapidly decomposing corpses. "Combat ability aside, however, you wouldn't happen to have seen any purple rockets lying around, have you?"

Shirou noted that the man wasn't speaking Japanese, but that he could understand the language just fine, and felt he could speak it equally well. Huh, this must be what Saber felt like when she had been summoned to Japan – she had mentioned in the past that the Grail typically accommodated for such needs. He supposed it had done the same for him. It was a weird sensation, one that took place almost entirely in his subconscious.

He thought for a moment before responding. To what degree of honesty should he answer? If this was his own world, and the magi in front of him were anything like the clock tower Rin sometimes spoke of, they wouldn't take kindly to a traveler from another dimension. That wasn't to say they wouldn't be _pleased,_ just that they would be _really_ enthusiastic about dissecting him. Literally.

He wasn't picking up any of that type of casual ruthlessness from either of them, though. They seemed curious, certainly, but not in the way of a mad scientist. If anything, they looked a little concerned for him. He must have looked a mess, after all.

He decided to tell the truth. "Ah, yeah. That's actually how I ended up here."

Ozpin took a moment to blatantly look around the clearing, giving an especially sharp glance towards the impact crater, before returning his gaze to Shirou and raising an eyebrow questioningly.

"Ah, well… it, uh, was completely disintegrated on impact?" Hmm. Perhaps not the whole truth after all. He somehow had a feeling that telling the man "Oh, it turned into an evil mud monster and then left" probably wouldn't make for a good first impression. Unfortunately, he also couldn't think of a very good lie.

The man seemed to accept the answer, miraculously. "Hmm, I see. Well then, might I ask your name? And perhaps a little more detail as to the circumstances that led you to our forest?"

Shirou gave a small, polite bow. "Of course. My name is Emiya Shirou. I'm sorry for any inconvenience I might have caused you. As for how I arrived here… well, it was an accident, I suppose? Or at least, it wasn't necessarily intended."

Ozpin waved a hand dismissively. "No inconvenience at all, Mr. Shirou. Any Grimm-slaying near Vale is, in fact, appreciated. To dispatch such a sizable pack of Beowolves, especially, is impressive for a man of your age, though they look to have done a number on you as well." He gestured to Shirou's badly torn and soot-stained clothing. "Do you require medical attention?"

Shirou looked down at his own appearance and took in just how disheveled he really was. "Oh, no. Actually, all of this was from before I landed here. And Emiya is actually my surname."

The woman's face, which seemed to have a resting state of "disciplinarian," shifted slightly towards more concern. "Mr. Emiya, then. My name is Glynda Goodwitch, and this is Headmaster Ozpin of Beacon Academy. Might I ask what could have caused such damage, then? And inquire as to where exactly you're from? If your home is in danger, we might be able to dispatch Huntsmen to assist."

Shirou shook his head. He considered the state of his hometown at the time of his departure – after being subjected to an all-out offensive between eight of Humanity's most powerful heroes, it was pretty much completely destroyed. "I… don't think that will be necessary. Fuyuki… there isn't much of it left."

Her expression grew even softer. "I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Emiya. It's always a sad day when a village falls to the Grimm. Fuyuki… that sounds Mistralian, am I right? You certainly are a long way from home."

Ozpin nodded. "It's a miracle your rocket managed to get here in one piece, especially if it was so fragile. And another miracle that you managed to survive the landing." His tone was probing, inviting Shirou to offer more details without outright asking for them.

"A miracle… Yeah, that's one way to put it." How else would you describe the wishes granted by the Grail? "It was kind of thrown together at the last second…" Literally. The rocket had existed for all of a few seconds before he'd been swept into it.

He could practically see his excuse coming together. They certainly were feeding him enough hooks to craft a story around. "I had just been fighting… nearly everyone was already defeated, including my partner. Fuyuki was completely destroyed… the last thing I remember, someone had shoved me into the rocket, and I was shooting off into the sky. And then I woke up here."

Glynda looked positively heartbroken at this point. Ozpin hid it better, but he was clearly feeling something along the same lines. If he looked deep enough, Shirou thought he could see a little anger there as well, like the man had a personal grudge to settle.

"And besides," Shirou added, his amber eyes glinting with determination and zeal, "I'm the kind of guy who wouldn't die even if I was killed."

Ozpin blinked at that statement, before continuing. "Yes, apparently so. I've not heard of Fuyuki, but you must certainly be strong to have survived such an ordeal. I can easily see how waking up to such fresh bad memories would generate enough negativity to attract a pack of Grimm of this size, as well. To have defeated them even in such a state speaks even more to your ability."

Shirou let out a small hum that could be construed as agreement, though it was really one of understanding. So, him imagining all the ways his little sister could murder him was what had attracted the monsters – no, the Grimm.

"Still," Ozpin said, "You seem to be remarkably composed for someone who has just been through such a tragedy."

"I'm… trying not to think about it too much, sir." Not to think about how angry everyone back home must be, at least.

What with him having tried to destroy the Grail, and then accidentally using its wish, and also abandoning them.

"Impressive mental fortitude then, as well. Mr. Emiya, might I ask… how old are you? And at which combat school did you study?"

"I've never been to a combat school, sir," he replied honestly. Homurahara academy was just a normal Japanese high school. "I had to learn through experience. And, um, I don't know exactly how old I am. I have no memories from before another tragedy that happened when I was young, but I should be around sixteen."

"I see." Ozpin shared a glance with Glynda before turning back to Shirou. "Well, then, one more question, Mr. Emiya. What are you going to do now?"

"Well, I was going to try to find a way out of this forest…"

"No, no, that's not what I meant." Ozpin chuckled despite himself. "Naturally, we'll be happy to assist you on that front. It's the least we could do after the loss of your home. I meant, Mr. Emiya, what are your long term plans? What do you plan to do with your life?"

"Oh. I'm going to become a hero." The answer came easily. It was the entire purpose of his being here, after all.

Ozpin leaned forward curiously. "A… hero, hmm? Not a Huntsman?"

Shirou hesitated a bit at the unfamiliar terminology, but shook his head. It seemed similar to how he'd made Kiritsugu teach him how to become a magus. Becoming a magus wasn't the end goal itself, but it was certainly easier to become a hero when you had magical superpowers. "A hero, certainly. If becoming a Huntsman is something that will help me towards that goal, then I'll become a Huntsman as well. But first and foremost, I want to become a hero."

A deep curiosity and interest was visible in Ozpin's deep brown eyes. "And what, exactly, does being a hero mean to you, Emiya Shirou?"

In turn, Shirou's own eyes seemed to glint in the sunlight as he looked off into the distance. He thought back to a certain smiling face, a smile that had saved his life and defined it from that point onwards. His own face bore a pale imitation of that same smile. "A hero is someone who saves everyone. A hero is someone who makes everyone happy."

Ozpin smiled back at the young man who seemed more genuinely happy than he had for their entire encounter thus far, but it was a slightly jaded smile. Slightly bitter. "I see. And you believe you will be able to save everyone?"

Shirou nodded back with zeal. "I know it."

Ozpin finally leaned back a bit, satisfied. "Well then, I can think of no better aid to that goal than to become a Huntsman. I would be hard pressed to think of anyone that I consider to be a hero that was not Huntsman trained. To that end, Mr. Emiya, would you be interested in a position in my academy? Beacon is one of the finest schools for Huntsmen and Huntresses in all of Remnant, and the new term happens to start in just a week. At sixteen, you would perhaps be a bit younger than your classmates, but it isn't so unusual for exceptionally talented students to be moved up a year."

Shirou was certainly intrigued. With the mention of combat schools, Ozpin seemed to be implying that this Beacon was an academy that trained heroes, presumably to fight monsters like the ones he had just slain – monsters that, based on their response to his story, seemed to be a fairly constant threat to the people of this world.

He thought of all the experience he'd gained in the short time since he'd summoned Saber – not just the personal combat training with one of the best swordswomen of all time, but also the valuable magecraft lessons from Rin, and the multitudes of different weapons he had picked up from Gilgamesh and Archer. How much more experience could he gain from attending a _school_ designed to train heroes instead of just picking up what techniques he could amidst the chaos of the Holy Grail War and his love life? There was just one problem.

"I would… but I'm afraid I don't have any money to my name. I wouldn't be able to afford tuition. I'd be willing to work for my keep, however. I'm fairly skilled at cleaning, and at mechanical work, and I can cook—"

"That won't be necessary, young man. Given the circumstances of your arrival to Vale, I'm sure we would be able to put together a scholarship fund for you – if Beacon even required a tuition. It's good to see such firm head on your shoulders, and a willingness to accept responsibility, but rest assured, it is in humanity's best interests to have as many skilled Huntsmen and Huntresses as possible. Beacon is an exclusive school, to be sure, but for those who qualify to attend, the benefits gained from having more defenders of humanity are far greater than any amount of money we might charge. There isn't anyone who can doubt the necessity of Huntsmen to humanity's survival, and as such all major Huntsmen academies are heavily subsidized. You'll need to complete our initiation test, but it takes place in this very forest – and given your performance just now, I have no doubts that you will easily pass."

Shirou nodded. That made sense, and was even better. He'd still probably help out with odd jobs anyways – he just liked making people happy. "Then… yes. I'll do it, gladly. Thank you, Headmaster Ozpin."

Glynda smiled at his decision as well, though it was still tinged with sadness, and spoke up once more. "I can imagine you don't have anywhere to stay here in Vale. We would be happy to put you up in the dorms for the week, if you wish, though I'm afraid it might be a bit lonely for a while. The students won't be arriving until the beginning of next week."

He nodded once more. "Thank you very much. That would be extremely appreciated."

"Excellent. If you have any questions, or simply wish to talk, I will try my best to always be available. As, I'm sure, will the other professors at Beacon, once I explain to them the circumstances. Now, shall we leave this place?"

Ozpin looked at Shirou again, and upon receiving no signs to the contrary, nodded at his deputy.

With a wave of her riding crop, accompanied by a pulse of prana that Shirou smelled rather than felt, he felt himself be slowly lifted into the air. Seeing the same happening to Glynda and Ozpin, he let the spell carry the three of them into the air, and through the open door of the still hovering aircraft above them.

Such a powerful display of telekinesis was certainly impressive. According to Rin, telekinesis was a notoriously finicky branch of magecraft – it was far, far easier to simply reinforce oneself to be able to jump to such a height than to manually levitate yourself the same distance. That said, the accompanying smell of prana was far less than he would have expected was necessary to lift three people like that. Was Glynda ridiculously efficient? Was she hyper-specialized, like he was? Most people would be flabbergasted at how easily tracing Noble Phantasms came to him, after all. Well, it was something to look into.

Come to think of it, was magecraft even a secret here? As the aircraft began to pull away from the forest and head towards the nearby cliffs, he thought about that issue. Ozpin had mentioned that _everybody_ valued Huntsmen. He and Glynda were trainers of Huntsmen, and therefore presumably powerful Huntsmen in their own right. Both of them had displayed – or at least smelled of – superhuman abilities and prana. Ergo, were all Huntsmen and Huntresses actually magi? The pilot of the aircraft they were currently inside, for example, did not in fact smell of prana – although the engines of the aircraft itself did, strangely enough. The same cinnamon scent he'd gotten from Glynda. The pilot obviously hadn't balked at the idea of dropping his passengers out of the aircraft from meters up, either.

Put together, every clue was leading towards the conclusion that magecraft was not only public knowledge, but that those who wielded it – people like him – were highly respected members of society. Heroes who put their lives on the line to defend humanity against literal monsters that were attracted to negativity. He once more considered how much the Grimm – Ozpin had also called them Beowolves, he noted – reminded him of the material Grail-kun was composed of. It was like fighting anthropomorphic – zoomorphic, rather – entities composed of corrupted Grail mud, entities that threatened the entire world.

It was almost like this world had been designed with him in mind! An entire social caste of superhero magi, defending people from irredeemable monsters composed of pure evil.

He couldn't help but smile a little bit. He knew it was hypocritical – that bastard priest that acted as a judge for the Grail War competitions had made sure he was aware of that. In order to save someone, there had to be someone who needed to be saved, which naturally had to involve some sort of danger to them. In wishing to be a hero, he was wishing for people to be unhappy, so that he might rescue them from that unhappiness.

In that sense, if this world had been created by the omnipotent power of the grail _just _so that he could live out his dream of being a hero, then he was the one responsible for all of the suffering in the world through his selfish wish.

However!

Rin had explained to him the Kaleidoscope theory. He knew that there were other dimensions, other worlds that existed. Worlds completely different from his own. He _also_ knew that as the Grail was a device created by magi, it would no doubt operate efficiently, efficiency being an integral part of any self-respecting magus' creative process.

Which was more likely, that the Grail had performed the third magic – materialization of the soul, Heaven's Feel – an incredibly huge number of times, enough to populate an entire _world_ with real people, for the sole purpose of letting them suffer? Not to mention the costs involved in creating this entire world and/or universe from scratch in the first place?

Or that the Grail had performed the second magic – Kaleidoscope – once, to seek out the one dimension that his dream was most suited towards, and send him there?

He nodded to himself, and his smile grew a little wider. These people had been suffering before he arrived. He had not caused their pain. It had existed here for a long time, and that was a tragedy, but he had made a wish and a promise to remove it, and that was exactly what he was going to do.

He was going to make everyone happy.

But first things first. He needed more information on this world and how it worked.

He spoke up for the first time since entering the vehicle.

"Does your academy have a library?"

Glynda smiled at him.

o-o-o-o-o

Beacon Academy did in fact have a library.

A library bigger than a football stadium.

Shirou had spent the majority of his first week there, "brushing up" on his worldly knowledge, i.e. learning it all for the first time. He only left the place to eat, sleep, help out around the school, and keep up his physical conditioning, because apparently there was a _lot_ that he would need to know, especially if he was to be a student here.

Despite being marketed to him as a combat school, he would still have to take classes like History. He could see the reasoning for it, of course – those who don't learn history are destined to repeat it, etc. etc. The only problem was that he would be assumed to have a baseline of knowledge about the world to work off of going into this level of classes, a baseline that he obviously didn't have.

Would it have been too much work for the Grail to shoot him some history lessons when it was rewiring his brain to use the local language?

Glynda had been happy to see his desire to study. He was pretty sure she'd interpreted it as nerves over being a first time student at a Huntsmen academy, combined with a desire to impress his professors early in the semester.

Well, history had taken up much of his focus over the past few days – one especially interesting tidbit was that apparently a race of people with animal features existed, called Faunus, and much of the important recent historical events involved their fight for equal rights – but he'd had the time to learn some other interesting things as well that he thought were slightly more pertinent and important.

What Shirou knew as "prana," along with the spell he called "reinforcement," the people of this world, Remnant, referred to under the broad purview of something called "Aura." They thought it was the manifestation of the soul, a force that powered their abilities and protected them from harm, as well as granting them superhuman strength and speed, not to mention helping them heal faster from injuries.

Where _he _had had to have his magic circuits forcibly ripped open, to give him channels in his body through which to circulate prana, an _extremely painful _process – the people of Remnant had discovered a method of "unlocking" an individual's Aura, involving a pain free ritual lasting only a few seconds and an aria.

That was another thing. _Anybody _could have their Aura unlocked. It didn't require the good luck to be born with magic circuits.

In fact, it kind of completely invalidated the fact that before he'd known that he _had _any magic circuits, he'd performed the magical equivalent of shoving a molten rod of steel all the way down his spine in an _excruciatingly_ painful ritual designed to cannibalize his own nervous system, which at any time could have completely backfired and killed him, _every time_ he'd wanted to perform even the most rudimentary basics of magecraft.

Well, even then, he couldn't bring himself to be envious over it. He'd eventually learned to do things the right way, thanks to Rin, and in the process, he'd trained up a pretty legendary pain resistance, if he did say so himself. Not to mention that the ease of Remnant's process meant that more people would be able to protect themselves, which meant less people that needed to be saved.

There were some differences, of course, between having an unlocked Aura and having active magic circuits.

Aura was slightly more intuitive. It was completely possible to become so used to using it that one could instinctively and nearly instantaneously use it to protect oneself, although some degree of awareness that an attack was coming was still required. Additionally, the projection of the soul throughout the entire body emanated out a short distance past the skin and whatever equipment one was using, which meant that when one was using their aura, they would be practically immune to harm until their entire reserves of aura went empty. Finally, it provided a small healing factor that magic circuits did not, and it _never_ turned completely off.

In contrast, Shirou needed to actively concentrate to switch on his magic circuits, and using them still came with a small amount of pain, though nothing like his early attempts at magecraft. Aura use was instead said to be an extremely comforting experience. Once his reinforcement was active, however, he didn't need to actively focus on using it to shield against individual attacks. Even if Aura use could become instinctive, it would never be as fast as him just always maintaining a reinforcement for the duration of a fight.

Also, his prana would saturate his skin, but no further. He was more durable when reinforced, but he could still be damaged by a sufficiently powerful attack regardless. It meant he would take more wounds, but it wouldn't incur the additional power drain that completely shielding against attacks using Aura did, and he'd always been a really fast healer for some reason anyways.

Aura usage also typically involved something called a "Semblance." Someone's semblance was like a superpower unique to them, an intensely personal power based on the character of one's own soul. Every person only had one semblance, and while they could be loosely passed down through families, each member of a family would still apply their own personal twist to the power granted. The closest analogue Shirou could come up with was that everybody who had an aura unlocked instinctively knew one mystery, or spell.

In theory, that meant that a magus using magic circuits would be far more versatile than an Aura user, capable of using any mystery that they had the elemental affinity for and knowledge of. Not to mention the fact that magi could draw in mana from the outside world to create more prana, rather than just relying on their own internal od reserves like Aura users seemed to.

In practice, Shirou only really knew Projection/Tracing anyways, negating that advantage. His reality marble was still absurdly versatile by the standards of most semblances, especially after he'd copied so many weapons during the War, but it was still just one ability. From what he could tell, the Aura cost to activate a semblance was typically a fraction of what it would cost a magus to recreate the same ability using prana, in a similar way to how his combined Element and Origin of "Sword" made his tracing incredibly cheap compared to most magi using gradation air, which made him think that there might be some truth to the 'manifestation of the soul' theory – but rather than soul, he would have perhaps said 'manifestation of the element and origin.' Personally, he was _also _incompetent at using mana, having always preferred to use od instead.

He really was more similar to the Aura users of Remnant than he was to most magi. Similar enough, in fact, that the device he'd been given called a "Scroll," reminiscent of a smartphone back on Earth, was able to read his prana reserves the same way he'd been assured it could read a normal Huntsman's Aura. He wasn't really sure how the tiny machine managed such a feat.

He'd been told he had a reserve of Aura a fair bit larger than average, and when he considered the way his reinforcement worked compared to Aura, i.e. allowing himself to be lightly injured rather than waste energy trying to completely negate attacks, he felt confident that he would have more staying power in a fight than most of his classmates.

There was, however, one more crucial component to this world that was unfamiliar to him, one that explained the whiffs of cinnamon he'd gotten from the aircraft's – called a Bullhead, he now knew – engines.

Dust.

A material that he was sure would cause Rin to either collapse in ecstasy or fall into a coma from jealousy and frustration, or both, if she ever found out such an amazing mineral existed.

o-o-o-o-o

He'd been true to his word, and when he took breaks from his studying, he did his best to help out with anything and everything the school needed.

He cleaned floors, organized classrooms, and even helped out with mechanical repairs of damaged equipment, of which there was a fair amount. Apparently being a school that catered to super-powered teens led to a lot of property damage, and while Glynda's Semblance of telekinesis had no doubt saved the school millions of the local currency, called lien, in repair costs, there were some more fine-scale applications of fixing things that she wasn't as skilled with.

It was while examining one such broken device, early in the week, that Shirou first found out about the miracle substance called Dust.

He'd assumed that the obviously modern amenities he was used to from his home were powered the same way here in Remnant – for example, burning natural gas on a stovetop, converting fossil fuels into electricity to power lightbulbs, using gasoline and jet fuel to propel vehicles, and using pumps to draw up water from wells to supply faucets.

Nope.

_Everything _was powered by something called Dust. Stoves produced a flame, and the scent of cinnamon, because the burner included small crystals of red Dust, the same way the engines of most vehicles did. Lightbulbs contained small amounts of yellow Dust that smelled like lemons and ozone. Faucets were basically just metal pipes connected to dark blue Dust crystals that produced water when the faucet was turned, and gave off a scent of petrichor.

Apparently, everything in this world was powered by Dust in its myriad of forms. But what was Dust, and why did it smell like prana?

Naturally, he'd immediately gone off to research this wonder-mineral.

Apparently, this world had huge, _naturally occurring_ deposits of crystals that were _filled_ _to the brim _with high quality prana, pre-altered to match the elemental affinity of the gems that housed it, and easy enough to use that almost _anyone_ could do it.

Using Dust crystals like Rin did, as glorified grenades, was child's play. Skilled Aura users went even further beyond such basic uses, able to use Dust to give their Aura and Semblances elemental effects.

Once he stopped to think about it, he noticed how there was incredibly little mana in the air. He hadn't even thought about it before, given his reliance on od. Apparently the reason for this was that the world had decided to take _all _the mana that would normally pervade it, and _concentrate it into minable crystals. On its own!_

One barely trained miner with a pickaxe could mine out a high quality crystal in a few minutes. That crystal would be equivalent in power to _months_ of Rin pouring prana into an equally sized gemstone.

And the gem from Remnant, the one that came pre-filled with mana, would cost her relatively _less._

Apparently, Dust was so affordable that literally _everyone_ used it to power even the most basic of appliances.

The _entire world _ran on concentrated magical power.

It had taken Shirou a little while to get that through his head.

He mused once more on how perfectly tailored this world seemed to be for him. Yes, it would certainly be easy for him to become a hero here.

Someone like Rin, an incredibly powerful and versatile magus, and a natural-born prodigy in the art of Jewel Magecraft?

She could have become a _god._

Well, anyways. He'd managed to fix the radiator he'd been working on. It was still just as easy as using Structural Grasp to gain knowledge of the object he was working with and then using a mixture of reinforcement and good old fashioned mechanical skills to fix whatever the spell told him was wrong with it.

Importantly, Ozpin had insisted on compensating him a little bit for his "services to the school above and beyond the call of duty," and at the end of the week, only a day before the prospective students were due to arrive, he'd been given a small stipend of lien for school supplies in addition to a bonus for his hard work.

That was how he found himself for the first time exploring the city of Vale. Alongside some not-so-subtle hints from Glynda that he should spend some time out on the town, both as a form of stress relief and to help him acclimate to the city that would become his new home, he'd decided that it was as good a time as any for him to try and get his hands on some Dust.

He had given a good effort to just have a nice day, as well. It just… was a little bittersweet. This world was pretty much everything he'd dreamed of, and he had a chance to make a real difference here, to save people, but he still missed the people he'd left behind.

He'd wandered around, seen the sights, and had eaten a huge lunch in honor of Saber, reasoning that she would have loved to try out the different extradimensional cuisines of Remnant. They were surprisingly similar to the foods from Earth. Vale's cuisine reminded him of western food from back home.

He'd made a stop to buy some new clothes as well, having been relegated to wearing a Beacon Academy uniform for the past week. The uniform was a little too similar to a suit for his liking, slightly more formal than the old uniforms of Homurahara. He bought a couple pairs of familiar casual clothes – blue jeans, white and blue shirts, and a white jacket with dark sleeves – as well as a teal and grey tracksuit for exercising in and sleeping. He then considered shopping around for armor.

Most of the people he'd seen on the street so far were civilians, but every once in a while, he would pass someone who was clearly a Huntsman or Huntress. They stood out like the illustrations of a pop-out book compared to the flat pages that made up the rest of the populace, in nearly every way. The colors they wore were more vibrant, the clothes themselves each unique in design, their personalities and presence seemed larger than life, and each of them bore the rich scent of prana, especially those that carried around Dust. Shirou supposed literally wearing your soul on your sleeve was probably responsible for the increased gravitas they bore.

Some of them wore normal, albeit flashy clothes, and some of them wore armor, and he was trying to figure out which was the more practical choice.

On the one hand, forgoing armor would make you lighter and more maneuverable, and tire you out less quickly, and Aura was enough to protect against all attacks that _did_ land until you were completely out of it.

On the other, armor could provide some protection even against attacks you were unaware of, and would continue to protect you even if you were out of Aura – but then again, at that point you were probably dead to rights anyways. He'd heard, however, that even though Aura blocked all actual harm, attacks still hurt, so perhaps the armor was a way to mitigate that pain as a way to maintain concentration in battle – getting punched in the chest with and without a breastplate would remove the same amount of Aura, but with the armor the force of the blow would be diffused across the surface and less pain would get through to the user.

He concluded that for a Huntsman of sufficient mental fortitude, someone able to instinctively react to danger and to ignore pain, going unarmored was the superior choice. For someone like him, however, who didn't have the benefit of complete damage nullification, armor would probably give him a bit more of an edge, even if he did have the mental strength to ignore pain. And besides, he would probably look more like a hero that way too.

Thus, he'd gone to visit the shops that catered to Huntsmen, and immediately completely forgotten what he went there for.

The _weapons. _

They were ridiculous. It wasn't _quite _like walking into a shop full of noble phantasms, but such a thing would never exist anyways, so this was basically the next best thing.

His structural analysis was going wild as he stood in the middle of a weapons shop, eyes flitting over the wares. Every single piece on display was incredibly complicated, with detailed internal mechanisms allowing them to shift into completely different shapes, somehow without compromising their structural integrity as weapons. Some of them, his reality marble was able to replicate, the ones that were closest to swords, and he relished the opportunity, even if he wouldn't be able to trace the Dust rounds that the firearm portions of the weapons seemed to universally use.

There were swords that turned into axes, swords that turned into spears, swords that turned into guns.

There were staves that turned into nunchaku that turned into guns, there were katar that turned into shields that turned into guns.

There was a Glaive-Guisarme that turned into a Bohemian Earspoon that turned into a Lucerne Hammer that turned into a Brandistock that turned into a gun.

There were guns that _turned into bigger guns._

"Amazing…" He let out the word in a soft sigh.

"I know, right?" A similarly breathy tone came from directly to his left.

He looked over and saw a short girl with black, neck length hair that shifted towards a dark red at the tips. Her outfit, a black dress with a poofy skirt and a red cloak, continued the color scheme. He saw in her bright silver eyes what must have been the same sense of wonder that he probably had borne just seconds ago. She smelled like fresh roses, carried in a warm summer breeze.

She then suddenly froze, and jerked her head to the side to notice him standing there and staring at her, before disappearing in a flash of movement so fast he could barely follow it. She reappeared a meter away, surrounded by a flutter of rose petals. "Ack! Sorry, I didn't mean – sorry for disturbing you – I just really like weapons –" She stammered out. He noticed her cheeks were slightly flushed with embarrassment.

"Whoa, calm down," Shirou said with a slight smile, raising his hands placatingly. "My bad, I got lost in the weapons too. I was just a little surprised. I hadn't noticed you standing there."

She gave a hesitant smile back. "Heh, uhh, me too. I didn't even see you when I came in."

She seemed to be struggling to find anything else to say to him, but she also clearly wasn't willing to let the brief conversation end so awkwardly, so Shirou gave her an easy out. "So, you like weapons too, then?"

Her eyes seemed to sparkle at the question. "I _love _weapons! They're like an extension of ourselves! They're a part of us! Oh, they're _so cool_, I sometimes come to weapon shops and just look around for _hours _and oh, now I'm rambling…"

Shirou let out a friendly laugh. "No, no, I know what you mean. I actually have no idea how long I've even been in here. I agree with everything you said." In his case, weapons being a part of himself was quite literally true.

The girl seemed shocked to have met such a kindred soul, and walked back closer before offering a hand to shake a little awkwardly. "Hi, I'm, uh, Ruby. Nice to meet you!"

He took it. She had a shockingly firm and strong grip considering her size, but then again, he supposed she, like all people with unlocked Auras, had hers constantly active. "Shirou. Pleasure to meet you as well."

She seemed to look him up and down for the first real time. "So, do you have a weapon of your own? Or are you just an enthusiast?" She asked eagerly.

Shirou chuckled. "Oh, I have a few. I don't always carry them on me, though. I notice you have me at a disadvantage there," he said, gesturing at the blocky contraption holstered at the small of her back.

Ruby reached back and ran a hand over it lovingly. "Yeah, this is my baby, Crescent Rose. I built her myself!"

"It's a… High-Caliber Sniper-Scythe, right?" He asked with an appraising glance. Of course, with Structural Grasp, he didn't really need to ask for confirmation. He probably currently knew more about the weapon than anybody else on Remnant besides its creator, who the Scythe recognized as Ruby Rose. From what he'd picked up from the weapon, she was incredibly skilled in its use, especially for somebody as young as her.

Her mouth dropped open in shock. "Wow! You were able to tell that even from just seeing her collapsed? That's incredible! You must be a real expert!"

He rubbed the back of his head at such earnest praise. He was a cheater, after all. "No, not an expert, just… an enthusiast, like you said. So, are you training to be a Huntress, then?"

Ruby nodded happily. "That's right! My older sister's joining Beacon this year, and I will be too in a couple more, as soon as I graduate Signal."

Signal was, if he remembered correctly, something of a feeder-school for Beacon. "Ah, maybe I'll meet her, then. I start there tomorrow as well."

And now the shock was back. "What?!"

She then quickly slammed her own hand over her mouth as her cheeks flushed heavily again. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to be rude! It's just… you didn't, umm, you don't look like most trainee Huntsmen I've met, and you looked a little younger than Yang, and I figured I would have seen you at Signal…"

"Don't worry about it. I understand I don't look the part right now. I only arrived in Vale a week ago, after my hometown was destroyed," he told her, sticking to the semi-true story he'd made up for Ozpin. "I'm being allowed to take the initiation test for Beacon a little younger than normal under special circumstances. I didn't have anything when I got here, which reminds me, I was actually supposed to be buying some armor here instead of staring at the weapons," he finished with a sheepish chuckle.

He then realized that at this point she looked horrified. Not only had she insulted him, basically telling him that he didn't look strong enough to be a Huntsman, but she'd said it to someone who owned nothing and had just lost his home. The regret was clear on her face. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories!" she babbled. "Please, forget I said anything, I'm sure you'll do great at Beacon… Oh, man, I should probably go, I'm so sorry…"

She made as if to hurry off, but he called out before she could. "Wait, Ruby! It's alright. You couldn't have known." She still looked conflicted when she turned back to him, and now it was making _him_ feel bad for having made her feel guilty. "If you wanted to make it up to me, uh, maybe you could help me pick out some armor?"

It seemed like he made the right choice. Her silver eyes shone with zeal and gratitude. "Yes! You won't regret it! I promise, I'll help you find the _best, coolest _armor _ever_!"

o-o-o-o-o

It was getting late in the evening by the time they finally left the shop.

First, the two of them had gone over pretty much every single piece of armor in the store, giving each one a pretty in depth cost/benefit analysis. Ruby had wanted to focus more on speed and aesthetics, like she did, but Shirou was pretty adamant on having at least some armor over his most vital areas. In the end, he'd gotten a lightweight gunmetal-grey cuirass that covered his chest and back, but left his arms bare – he reasoned that he could probably heal fast enough to avoid death by bleeding out even if he happened to have a vein or artery sliced in his arm, but being stabbed in the heart was another matter.

As well as a pair of durable black pants and matching steel-toed combat boots, Ruby convinced him to purchase a pair of greaves that tapered outwards slightly along the centerline of his shins, providing what she reasoned to be a boost to the damage of any kicks he might deliver without sacrificing any mobility.

Finally, to complete the outfit, Ruby had absolutely insisted that he needed some color. In the end, he came out with a kind of asymmetrical half-cape that wrapped around his neck like a scarf, draped over one shoulder, and was secured by a brooch, ending just above the small of his back. He could also pull it up over his head like a hood.

He'd wanted to get it in blue, as an homage to Saber, but Ruby had told him he would look better in red. As he finished fastening it in the changing room, he sighed as he looked in the mirror. There was no mistaking it – the ensemble bore a faint resemblance to Archer's gear, which Shirou wasn't too enthused about. There was some other part of his brain, however, that made him think it kind of looked like something Kiritsugu would have worn, if he'd been a hero. He could accept that.

Ruby practically squealed at him when he left the room to show her. "Shirou, you look awesome! It's like a blend of 'I'm here to save the day!' and 'I could beat you with one hand behind my back!' It looks so practical, with just enough individuality and flare to make it unmistakable that you're a Huntsman! All we have left is to do something about _that_," she finished, pointing at the plain round brooch securing his cloak.

"Hmm? Did I fasten it wrong?"

"No, silly," she laughed. "That's just a placeholder. Most people prefer to put their emblem somewhere on their combat uniform." She tapped her own belt buckle, which sat on her right side – a stylized rose in full bloom.

"An emblem, huh?" He considered the proposition for a moment, before muttering "_Trace, On," _under his breath. In a brief sparkle of light, he projected a small, stylized sword, framed pointing upwards within a diamond. The symbol of the Saber class – if he couldn't have blue, he would remember Saber another way. His Tracing wasn't really limited by material, but he felt gold would be a little too ostentatious, so he made it out of orichalcum, a copper-zinc alloy with a similar color, and added a pin to the back. He removed the placeholder brooch and replaced it with his projection.

"_Ooooh," _Ruby exclaimed,leaning forwards to get a better look at the intricate details of the miniature sword. "How did you do that?"

"Semblance," he explained casually. "It's not permanent, but it's so small and easy for me to make that it'll be easy to make it last whenever I'm in my combat gear, and I can just make a new one every time I put it on."

Ruby nodded in understanding. "Ah, that's really cool. What else can it do? I-if you don't mind me asking, that is. I know a lot of people like to keep their Semblance a secret," she asked, a slight rosy tint to her cheeks, with a shy smile.

"To put it simply?" He smiled back. "I can make swords. Other stuff too, but mostly swords."

Ruby beamed. "Wow! You must _really _like weapons, if even your soul agrees that the power most suited to you is making swords!" She paused for a second, and then pouted cutely. "I just can run really fast."

He couldn't help but laugh again. "That's really cool too, Ruby. I'm sure super-speed is really useful for a lot of different situations. Anyways, thanks a ton for helping me pick out my armor. I really appreciate you taking so much time out of your day to help me." And there was that shy smile again. She sure was expressive, wasn't she?

Speaking of spending the whole day, by the way, what time was it? He spared a glance outside, and his eyes widened when he realized just how dark it already was. "Oh, crap. It's gotten late. I was supposed to stop by a Dust shop and try to pick up a few crystals to practice with before I went back to Beacon for the night."

"Y-yeah?" Ruby asked, nervous for some reason, but still smiling. "I still have to go pick up some Dust rounds for Crescent Rose, too, and, um… I know a Dust shop not far from here that's usually open late, and, um, we could… go together? If you want to?"

He smiled right back at her. "That sounds great. I'll be in your debt again. Thank you."

She spun around and tugged her hood over her head, before awkwardly marching over to the counter, but she couldn't spin fast enough for Shirou to miss her ruby-red cheeks, nor her wide smile. He followed her up and paid for his purchases before they left the shop side by side.

o-o-o-o-o

"…understand how you can say that! Guns are so much faster and easier to use than any other ranged option available, not to even mention how recoil on heavier weapons can offer boosts to maneuverability and strength, if you use them right," Ruby exclaimed with playful anger and a light punch to Shirou's arm as they walked through the entrance of the Dust shop, 'From Dust til Dawn.'

"Hey, hey, I'm not saying guns aren't useful. In fact, I think they're really cool," Shirou defended himself. "I'm just saying they don't _click_ with me the same way bladed weapons do, especially swords. Plus, other ranged options have benefits too. Sure, the consistency of guns is an admirable quality in and of itself, but it has its disadvantages too. Every time you shoot, the bullet is going to come out with the exact same power and speed, both of which are determined by the gun itself. Compare that to throwing a weapon using your Aura to determine the strength of the projectile – most guns are going to fall way short in terms of power compared to the strength of trained huntsmen, not to even mention weapons like bows that can enhance that strength even further, and when you get a gun that _can, _what if you want to use an option that's a little less lethal? If your enemy doesn't have any Aura, would you really be ok shooting them with a high-caliber sniper bullet?"

"Hmph," Ruby snorted as she failed to immediately refute his arguments. "This isn't over, mister!" she declared, poking a finger into his still armored chest before heading over to the counter to negotiate with the elderly shopkeeper. The smile on her face belied her true feelings, however. He could tell she enjoyed a good argument over the merits of different weapons as much as he did.

While she bought her ammo, he wandered around the store noting the prices of the various products. He basically had the run of the whole place – there were no other customers there besides Ruby and himself. After some mental calculations, he figured he had enough lien left to buy a few fair sized vials of various colors of powdered Dust, and a few of the smaller crystals as well.

He headed to the back of the store, where he took a small vial from a rack and plugged it into one of the Dust tubes set against the wall. Over the futuristic-sounding pneumatic hum of the tube pumping the vial full and then applying an airtight cover, he heard the tinkle of the store's door opening, and several pairs of feet entering. Even over the spicy scent of the prana in the Dust surrounding him, he caught a whiff of cigar smoke that made him wrinkle his nose.

"Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a Dust shop open this late?" A smooth voice echoed around the shelves. It was followed by a pair of ominous, very familiar clicks.

Shirou's eyes narrowed immediately. "_Trace, On," _he whispered, reinforcing himself in preparation before sneaking a peek around a shelf stocked with some kind of bagged Dust product. Even despite the tenseness of the situation, he noted that it appeared to be some kind of food ingredient, and made a mental note to look into that later.

Standing by the counter was a man in a white overcoat and black bowler hat, from under which peeked a shock of vibrantly orange hair. He held a fairly nondescript looking cane that Shirou's instinctive Structural Grasp recognized as Melodic Cudgel, which actually could shoot out highly explosive flares and act as a grappling hook, wielded by one Mr. Roman Torchwick.

He was flanked by four men that could only be described as "goons." Big men in black suits with red ties, all with nameless red machetes sheathed at their sides, and two with drawn pistols. One was leveled at the shopkeeper, who was cowering back with his hands in the air. The other was pointed right at Ruby's head.

The man, Roman, barked an order to the other two men, who were holding large, empty Dust cases. "Grab the Dust."

"Are you _robbing _me?" Ruby asked loudly, with a hint of incredulity, but no fear.

The goon holding her up looked at her like she was stupid. "Yes!"

"Ohhh," she replied with a small smirk.

Shirou, who had been about to trace something not very flashy, maybe Kanshou or Bakuya, which he would then throw at the gun to slice it in half and render it safe, couldn't even follow Ruby as she moved. Her super-speed was apparently _really _fast.

All he saw was a black and red blur that crashed through the window, leaving fluttering rose petals in its wake, before Ruby became visible again a split second later in the street outside, riding on the back of the henchman she'd taken with her like he was a skateboard, the man's face skidding across the pavement.

Shirou winced. The man deserved it for having pulled a gun on a fifteen year old girl, but still, that had to hurt.

She casually stepped off him and drew her weapon, the massive scythe unfurling and being drawn into a complicated flourish before slamming into the ground, leveled back at the robbers.

All four remaining men stood in front of the shattered window, staring out at the little girl who'd just taken out a man twice her size in the time it would have taken them to blink. Shirou supposed that was pretty much his cue.

"Okayyy…" was all Roman had time to say before Shirou made his move. Considering that he was currently surrounded by extremely volatile magical crystals, he was restricted to his more mundane swords, and he also needed one big enough to hit all four men. The answer to this problem was clear.

The only warning the men received was a faint teal glow from behind them as the circuits in Shirou's arm lit up, and the only one who was fast enough to react was Roman, who spun around just in time to interpose his cane between himself and the oncoming attack.

Shirou had begun a swing not unlike a baseball player's, waiting until he was already mostly through the action before projecting a sword into his hands – that was the only way the thing would have fit inside the store.

The enormous axe-sword he traced was hewn from a single block of stone, and could only really be called a weapon by virtue of its mass. It was only usable by Shirou through a combination of extreme reinforcement and by drawing upon the strength of its original wielder, the Greek hero Heracles.

He used the blunt backside of the blade, but it still hit like a speeding school bus. It left a visible dent in Melodic Cudgel, and swept all four men along with the swing without any appreciable decrease in momentum. The second all four were airborne, Shirou released the projection before his swing could continue and completely destroy the front walls of the shop.

Two of the three goons flew off into the distance, slamming into storefronts on the opposite side of the street before falling prone. Shirou was lucky they all smelled of an unlocked Aura, or he would have never dared to use such a mighty weapon against them.

The third, Ruby hooked with her scythe as he flew past, beginning to spin around rapidly.

Roman, impressively, managed to twist and flip in midair to increase wind resistance, and then shot a flare backwards out of his cane to reduce his momentum further. An impressive weapon, Shirou thought, if it could fire successfully even after the damage it had taken.

The orange-haired thief landed with a slight stagger, and then immediately was heavily impacted by the body of his final henchman as Ruby finished her spin and launched him. The human missile knocked Roman back again and sent him sliding back another few meters. Shirou hopped through the window and moved to stand beside Ruby as Roman shoved the unconscious body off him and gingerly tried to stand.

"Damn, what are they feeding you kids nowadays?" Roman grumbled as he regained his feet and brushed himself off.

Ruby seemed torn between keeping an eye on the thief and at turning to interrogate Shirou, but her curiosity overcame her. "What was that?! All I saw was a flash of blue light and then all four of them were flying! Was that a Dust technique?"

Shirou smiled and shook his head. "I'll show you later, I promise. For now, he's getting away," he said, tilting his head towards Roman, who was now rapidly ascending a ladder on the side of a nearby building.

"Crap!" Ruby exclaimed and shot off after him.

Shirou sprinted after them as well, but in speed at least, Ruby completely outclassed him, even when he was fully reinforced. Ahead of him, Roman crested the ladder, and a moment later Ruby disappeared onto the roof as well, having bypassed the ladder entirely by taking a huge leap and firing her sniper rifle once behind her as she did, riding the recoil to the top of the building.

Hmm, maybe she had a point about using guns as a propulsion system after all, Shirou thought as he made his own reinforced leap at the ladder. He made it perhaps two-thirds of the way up and began to climb the rest of the way as he heard the telltale whine of a Bullhead's engines approaching.

Shirou mantled the wall just in time to see Roman, now standing inside the doors of a bullhead hovering a few meters above the opposite edge of the rooftop, lob something shiny underhandedly towards Ruby.

He was already sprinting towards them as Ruby looked down at the object that had landed softly near her feet, causing her to miss the fact that Roman had raised his cane and was now pointing it at her.

He tackled her forwards, over the object and incoming projectile, a split-second before the explosive flare hit and detonated the red Dust crystal. He felt the incredible heat and force at his back, propelling them further forwards than his tackle alone would have taken them. He spun around at the last moment, just as the explosion faded, his back impacting the small lip surrounding the roof with a crunch of stone. Ruby came to a marginally softer stop against his chest.

"You alright?" He asked with a small cough as she rolled off him and staggered back to her feet. She looked at him with determination and only a slight hint of fear, offered him a nod, and then began to squeeze off shots from her sniper-scythe at the Bullhead.

Rolling out of her line of fire, Shirou stood in time to see a well-placed shot impact one of the Bullhead's engines, causing the aircraft to dip and buck wildly and sending Roman stumbling forward towards the cockpit.

Well, Shirou supposed he did in fact need a ranged weapon if he wanted to help bring the ship down. Sighing to himself, his arm lit up once more as he projected one of the best ranged weapons he knew of – a huge, matte black bow taller than he was. He might not have liked the red-mantled Archer, but the man knew quality weapons.

As Ruby continued to fire semi-inaccurately – that is to say, she wasn't missing the Bullhead at all, but she also wasn't taking the time to line up her shots to hit anything vital – he also projected a mundane steel arrow, using his reinforced muscles to draw the bow back and taking careful aim.

The bullhead leveled out and began to spin, facing towards the south-east and providing a clear shot into the cockpit. He released his arrow, firing it out at least as fast as one of Ruby's bullets, and it pierced through the reinforced glass of the cockpit like it was made of paper. He'd aimed it directly at where a pilot's head would be, but through the hole of shattered glass, he could see that Roman had managed to jerk his head just barely out of the way.

Another figure, presumably the previous pilot before Roman had taken over, now stood silhouetted in the still open doorway.

Only her pale legs and the hem of a crimson dress were visible, her upper body hidden in the shadows, though her arms and bodice glowed with a pale orange pattern reminiscent of flames that allowed Shirou to track the elaborate movements she was making – almost like she was dancing. The graceful movements ended with a forcefully thrust forward palm, out of which a concentrated ball of fire was rapidly launched towards Ruby.

She had just fired, caught in the hefty recoil of her weapon. She wouldn't be able to dodge. There was no real time for anything else, so Shirou unhesitatingly pushed off heavily with his right foot, shattering the concrete below it and sending himself hurtling into the path of the projectile. Even so, he barely managed to get into the way in time, and it impacted his unarmored left shoulder.

Despite himself, he couldn't help but let out an involuntary "Hrk!" noise as he felt the heat of the attack. The fireball was _so _concentrated, in fact, that on impact it acted more like a liquid than the pure energy it was – almost like a plasma. A few droplets even splashed off and landed on the roof behind him, luckily none on Ruby, where they began to melt the concrete. Meanwhile, the majority of the attack's power flash-burnt off the skin of the impact area, as well as a centimeter or so of the muscle below it, even despite his reinforcement, and continued to smolder afterwards.

He supposed, through the haze of pain, that this was one of those times where having Aura instead of reinforcement might have been useful, and he sank down to one knee. He briefly wondered why the floor underneath him was glowing like a white-hot bar of steel when an incredible force just under his navel jerked him suddenly back.

He was sent sprawling across the ground. The ceiling where he'd been kneeling erupted into a pillar of flame that he was sure would have incinerated him instantly. Next to him was Ruby – she'd apparently somehow retracted the sharp blade of her scythe, hooked him with the then blunt weapon, and fired forward to use the recoil to launch them back and out of harm's way. Clever.

He did his best to ignore the pain and stood up. Those glowing orange arms were dancing again. He stepped in front of Ruby and wondered what to project – should he go for an offensive Noble Phantasm, to try to knock the Bullhead out of the air before the woman in the red dress fired? Better not, there might be collateral damage in that case as the aircraft crashed. Maybe Rho Aias to defend the two of them? Could he win a war of attrition behind the prana-expensive shield if it came to that? Probably not, he answered himself honestly.

He was spared the need to make the decision by a flutter of purple touching down in front of him. He blinked blearily through the pain and saw a pair of black tights on some really nice, shapely legs. Ah, good. Rider was here to save them.

He pitched forward and landed face-down on the pavement with a smile. He'd stopped a robbery, and his new friend Ruby was safe. All was right in the world.

o-o-o-o-o

Ruby sat in a dark room at a table lit by a single beam of light, her face streaked with tears. Opposite her stood Glynda Goodwitch, deputy headmistress of Beacon.

The blonde woman let out a long sigh before she began to speak. "I'm not going to lecture you over this, young lady. I think you've already learned any lessons I would have hoped to teach you from this encounter. On the one hand, you acted honorably and swiftly to stop a criminal. You also, however, put yourself and others in great danger, and Emiya Shirou paid the price for that rashness."

Ruby looked up and sniffled. "Is he going to be okay?"

Glynda sighed again and nodded. "He is stable, and is reported to be healing extremely quickly, even more so than most Huntsmen. He's expected to make a full recovery."

The young girl let out a strangled sob of relief.

"If it were up to me, I would leave it at that, and have you sent home. However… there is someone here who would like to meet you." She stepped aside, and from the shadowy doorway behind her stepped Headmaster Ozpin.

"Ruby Rose. You… have silver eyes."

Ruby only sniffled again in response. Ozpin slid a plate of cookies towards her. She timidly took one and began to nibble on it.

"Impressive skill with a scythe, young lady. I do believe I've only ever seen such skill with one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed in one man before. A dusty old crow."

Ruby nodded. "My uncle. He's a teacher at Signal. He trained me."

"I see." Ozpin nodded back. "I take it, then, as a student of Signal, that you wish to become a Huntress."

She bobbed her head once more, and began to nibble on a second cookie.

"Miss Rose, do you know who I am?"

"Yes. You're Professor Ozpin. The headmaster of Beacon."

"And what would you say, Miss Rose, if I told you that I was impressed with your skill, your quick wit in saving your friend, and your sense of justice, and that I would be willing to train you such that the next time you encounter such an opponent as you did tonight, you would not be outclassed?"

Ruby stared at him with wide silver eyes, not daring to believe what she thought she was hearing.

He leaned forward across the table almost conspiratorially. "Would you like to come to my school?"

One final nod, more forceful than any of those previous. "More than anything."

Ozpin leaned back with a satisfied smile. "Well, ok."

o-o-o-o-o

**Fic assumes familiarity with Fate franchise, with focus given to Carnival Phantasm. At least passing familiarity with RWBY would be useful as well. I'll try to maintain some of the humorous tone of Carnival Phantasm mixed with the seriousness of RWBY and Fate in general. **

**You'll probably eventually notice that even though Carnival Shirou is explicitly the protagonist, I will definitely be mentioning things that occurred in the three main game routes as if they've canonically happened, not necessarily in the context that they actually happened. Treat this like an expanded universe extra-crack version of Fate where anything is fair game. **

**Expect a Shirou overpowered in many ways, underpowered in others. Hopefully the early summary of the events of Carnival Phantasm explains what aspects of the show I thought hinted at a powerful Shirou. I'd write a harem route if I knew how (to stay true to the source material, of course), but I doubt I can. We'll see.**

**As always, I'm just writing for my own enjoyment. I like Shirou, and after trying once again to watch through RWBY (I always typically fall off around the time Monty Oum died, RIP) and binging Carnival Phantasm again, I decided it would be nice to throw the RWBY cast a bone in the form of a pretty powerful dude who just wants to be a hero, minus a lot of the edginess he usually comes along with. Hope you enjoy my semi-serious take on a pretty silly concept.**

**I'll try to answer any questions I get at the end of the next chapter. I am my own beta; please lodge any complaints with me.**

**Sorry about how I've sort of abandoned my other story, but I just wasn't feeling as inspired to keep working on it. We'll see in the future if I end up going back to it.**

**Thanks for reading.**


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh, I can't believe my baby sister's going to Beacon with me! This is the best day _ever!" _Yang Xiao-Long exclaimed, wrapping Ruby in a huge hug.

They were standing in the lower viewing docks of the huge airship that carried all the prospective trainees from the city of Vale to Beacon Academy. "Pleash shtop," Ruby mumbled, unable to breath in her sister's tight embrace.

Yang got the message, however, and released her. "But I'm so _proud_ of youuu!" she said, bouncing in place in excitement.

Ruby sighed. "Yeah, but if I'd been a little better, Shirou would be here too…" she grumbled.

Yang put her hands on her hips and sighed. "Ruby, I've told you a million times already, your boyfriend's gonna be fine. Just 'cause he's not coming today doesn't mean they're going to kick him out entirely. He'll probably catch up with us in a few days, as soon as he's done healing!"

Ruby flushed. "And I've told you a million times he's not my boyfriend! But he said he was being allowed to test a year early, kind of like me, and he was injured, and I wasn't, so maybe they'll make him take the test next year instead, and it's like I stole his spot just because he got hurt protecting me!" she rambled out, all in a single breath, waving her hands around animatedly.

Yang placed her hands gently on her sister's shoulders. "Ruby, I promise. It makes _no_ sense that they would reward you and punish him. Nobody's stealing anybody's spots here. And if he's not your boyfriend, I bet he will be sooooon!" She finished her heartfelt reassurance by squeezing one of Ruby's cheeks.

"Yaaang, Stop! That's not true!"

"Oh, it's not, is it?" The blonde raised one eyebrow before sidling up next to Ruby and placing one arm around her shoulders the other raised off vaguely pointing into the distance. "I can see it now. Two young prodigies, both admitted to Beacon early, bonding over a mutual love of weapons and spending hours shopping for clothes together."

She paused for a second and looked directly at Ruby. "For the record, I don't think you've ever spent hours chatting with _anyone _before, besides family."

Her eyes once more took on the glazed look she was using to portray her vision. "And after that, _you _of all people work up the courage to ask _him_ to go somewhere else with you, and he says _yes, _and then you bond even _more _beating up bad guys together, _and _then he heroically sacrifices himself for you to save you from a terrible evil! You kneel by his body, cradling his head in your arms, tears running down your face – you look to the heavens, and scream 'Nooooooooo!'"

Ruby pulled away, her cheeks having grown progressively redder the more Yang spoke. "That last bit's not how it happened!"

Yang stared down her nose at Ruby and raised an eyebrow again.

Ruby somehow found a way to get even more flustered. "Fine, that's not _exactly _how it happened. I didn't scream 'No!' at least. And it wasn't a 'terrible evil,' it was a fireball! And stop teasing me! It was really scary, you shouldn't make fun of it unless you were there! He could have died, or I could have died!"

That did seem to sober Yang up a bit. Her eyes briefly flashed red. "Yeah, well, that criminal was as lucky your boyfriend was there as you were. Because if he'd managed to harm a single hair on your pretty little head, I would have shattered both his legs and shoved them so far up his –"

Her graphic plans for revenge were cut off, as a nearby newscast, something about the White Fang disrupting peaceful protests, was interrupted by a hologram of Professor Goodwitch.

"Hello, and welcome to Beacon," the hologram spoke. "You are among a privileged few who have received the honor of being selected to attend this prestigious academy. Our world is experiencing a time of incredible peace, and as future Huntsmen and Huntresses, it is your duty to uphold it. You have demonstrated the courage needed for such a task, and now, it is our turn to provide you with the knowledge and the training to protect our world."

Their argument forgotten, the two girls smiled at each other in determination.

o-o-o-o-o

Wow. One minute off the airship, and Ruby had already been abandoned. Most of the prospective students had rushed ahead – including her own sister – in a whirlwind of activity that had left the young girl staggering. Yang had left her with a parting mission: Make new friends.

Perhaps a little melodramatically, but aided in part by her dizziness, she had fallen backwards onto the ground. Or at least she would have, if a trolley covered in Dust cases hadn't broken her fall.

She was then lectured for what felt like an eternity by a really annoying white-haired girl about how dangerous Dust was, while the girl swung around a partially opened vial and scattered Dust into the air.

One sneeze-catalyzed explosion later, as Ruby was trying even harder to apologize, a savior appeared! A really cool girl, with black hair and a bow, pointed out that the girl she had accidentally antagonized so hard was apparently some kind of Dust company princess. Great.

Well, the girl had driven away the princess, Weiss Schnee, but then stalked off before Ruby even had a chance to thank her, leaving Ruby as what appeared to be the very last straggler of the entire class. In exasperation, she lay down on the ground to take a breather.

"Welcome to Beacon," she muttered. So much for making friends.

She let herself lie there for a few minutes before pulling herself to her feet with a tired sigh. She resignedly trudged off in the direction she thought the other students had headed off in.

"Ruby!" A few minutes later, her moping was interrupted by someone approaching her at a right angle to her own path.

There was a sudden burst of rose petals as Ruby disappeared, and the boy approaching them was blasted off his feet as she enveloped him in a flying tackle.

"SHIROU! Ohmygod I was so _worried _I thought you were _dead _when you just collapsed like that, why did you _do _that, I had full aura still, I would have been _fine_, I can't believe you would just jump in front of a _fireball _like that don't you _ever do that again!"_

Shirou laughed as he struggled his way to his feet, the red-cloaked girl still clinging to him like a limpet. "Ruby, I'm fine, really. I heal really fast, don't worry about it. I heard Ozpin let you into Beacon! That's amazing!"

She stared up at him happily, and then flushed as she realized she was still wrapped around him. She hastily extricated herself from his firm, warm body. "Y-yeah, I know! But then I didn't see you on the airship, and I was worried they'd kicked you out!"

Shirou shook his head. "No, didn't I mention? I only arrived in Vale recently, and I didn't have any money. Headmaster Ozpin's been letting me stay at the dorms here. I wasn't on the airship because I was already here."

Ruby blinked. Oh, that did make pretty good sense. Still, she punched him in the arm.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"For making me worried, dummy! You didn't even send me a message saying you were okay!"

"I don't have your contact info, Ruby."

She blinked again. She then punched him again.

"Hey! What about that one?"

She crossed her arms and let out a soft _hmph._ "Stop making sense when I'm mad at you!"

Shirou laughed, and handed her his scroll. "Here, you can put your number in now if it'll make you feel better." He looked down at her, a soft warmth in his amber eyes. "For what it's worth, I really am sorry for making you worry. I'm glad you're alright, Ruby."

For a moment she paused, shocked, and then snatched his scroll away and averted her eyes as she blushed and began to create a contact for herself. _Stupid Yang,_ she thought. She wasn't really sure why she was blaming her older sister, but it felt appropriate anyways.

She stared at the scroll for a brief moment after she confirmed that she was done – she was literally his first and only contact. For some reason, that made her blush grow deeper, but also made her a little bit sad.

"Anyways, Ruby, where were you going?" Shirou asked before accepting the scroll back. "I looked for you in the crowd, but you weren't there, so I went to go find you. You know that orientation is taking place in the auditorium, right? It's over that way," he said, pointing in a direction very different from the one she'd been walking in.

She smiled a little self-deprecatingly. "I do now?"

He laughed and turned around. "Come on, then."

She happily ran up to walk alongside him.

o-o-o-o-o

"Ruby! Over here! I saved you a spot!"

As Shirou and Ruby entered the auditorium, a blonde girl in a brown leather jacket waved at them. Her weapon was… Ember Celica, the pair of bracelets she wore, which mecha-shifted into Dual Ranged Shot-Gauntlets. Wielded by Yang Xiao-Long, which would make her the Yang that Ruby had mentioned the previous night – Ruby's sister.

Hmm. Structural Grasp was really useful for connecting dots when you were surrounded by people that openly carried weapons.

"Come on, Shirou! You have to meet my sister, Yang!" Ruby declared as she grabbed his arm and tugged him over to the blonde.

Or he could just wait a second for people to connect the dots for him, he supposed.

"Aww, so cute! The two of you even have matching outfits?" Yang gushed as the two of them approached. Ruby wasted no time in slugging her sister on the arm.

Now that he thought about it, their gear was kind of similar in theme, wasn't it? Black with a red cloak? Had Ruby done that on purpose?

"Yang! You ditched me and I exploded!"

"Yikes, meltdown already?"

"No, I literally exploded a hole in front of the school! And then I was yelled at, and I was lost, and I wouldn't have even made it here on time if Shirou hadn't gone looking for me!"

"Aww!" Yang wrapped her sister in another smothering hug as Ruby squawked and flailed around in an attempt to break free. She addressed Shirou over the smaller girl's shoulder. "So, you're the mysterious hero I heard so much about last night, eh?"

He stepped forward and extended one hand for her to shake, which coincidentally provided the opening Ruby needed to escape. Yang smelled like a roaring campfire to his magus' nose. "Emiya Shirou, first name Shirou. Pleasure to meet you."

"Heh. Yang Xiao-Long. Gotta say, hero, you're a little shorter than I thought you'd be with how much Ruby hyped you up."

Shirou shrugged. She had a fair point – she was a solid six centimeters taller than him. He smiled when she called him a hero, though. "And I expected you to look more like your sister."

The two girls were nothing alike. Yang had long blonde hair that cascaded freely all the way down her back, and pale lilac eyes. And where Ruby was more… petite, Yang was certainly not. She wore one of the skimpiest pairs of spandex shorts he'd ever seen, and he was pretty sure only the asymmetrical butt-cape she wore from a belt protected her from the stares of every man in the amphitheater. Her crop-top leather jacket likewise strained to contain her equally impressive other assets. Beneath it, she wore a yellow shirt with an emblem of a burning heart emblazoned on one breast.

"Heh. Touché, short stuff. Still," she continued, "Not bad. Handsome enough face, solid physique, and if you're even half as nice as Ruby made you out to be, I can't say there's anything I disapprove of." She shot him a wink. "I can see why she feels the way she does about you."

"_Yaaaaang!" _Ruby screeched, red as a tomato, raining down wild punches on the older girl's back to no effect.

Shirou felt his own face flush as well.

By his own admission, he might be a little bit dense when it came to such matters, and it usually took something really blatant to get him to take a hint, like the time Rin had tried to drag him and Saber back to bed all together, or that time Sakura took all her clothes off in front of him and told him she wanted to make love. Even then, though, could a man really be sure?

Just because he was aware of his own density didn't mean he was any good at overcoming it. This _did_ seem like a pretty straightforward statement, though… was Yang implying…? "R-Ruby? She feels… how, exactly?" He looked to the girl in question, but Ruby refused to meet his eyes.

"I-it's not like that, Yang. We're just – just friends, right Shirou?" she stammered out.

"Ah, I suppose so?" Shirou half-said, half questioned. Oh well, it must have just been a misunderstanding.

He wasn't sure exactly how he'd gotten three different girls interested in him back in his own world, but it would probably be silly to assume he was already attracting girls in this one. Although, Yang _had_ just called him handsome… Maybe she was interested? Eh, probably not, and there was no way to be sure.

Ruby looked mortified. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, she was promptly distracted.

"You!"

The newcomer to the conversation was a girl only slightly taller than Ruby, and was clad in a fairly similar dress, complete with poofy skirt, but that was where the similarities ended. Her dress was of a far finer make, embroidered with delicate snowflakes, and was a white that under a certain light seemed to shimmer light blue. Her hair was pure white, worn in a pony-tail skewed to one side, and she had sharper features than Ruby. Where Ruby's silver eyes were warm and innocent, this girl's icy blue ones were cold, and really only seemed to express annoyance. A harsh scar traced its way over her left eye.

Even their weapons couldn't have been more different – Ruby's massive scythe was a heavy instrument that relied on momentum and rotational force to cut deeply, where the rapier sheathed at the girl's side – Myrtenaster – was a delicate tool meant to pierce precisely, as well as to channel Dust into a rather versatile semblance of quasi-magical glyphs. Based on the weapon's history, that would make this… Weiss Schnee.

Her prana smelled minty fresh, and made his nose tingle pleasantly.

Shirou had heard the name Schnee before, while he was researching Remnant – the Schnee Dust Company was the world's biggest supplier of Dust.

"You're lucky we weren't blown off the side of the cliff, you clutz!"

Ruby spun to face the girl, face still flaming red, and let out a growl that actually made Weiss take a surprised step back.

"Uh, probably not a good time, whoever-you-are. She's kind of in a mood. Hardcore teasing, you know how it is," Yang warned her off with a dismissive wave.

"Ex_cuse_ me? Whoever-I-?! Do you even know who I am?"

Yang stared at her and shrugged. Ruby continued to seethe and awkwardly punch Yang.

Weiss actually seemed to deflate a little bit. "Does _anybody _in this school even recognize me?"

Shirou hesitantly raised his hand, not sure if that was a rhetorical question.

"Hmph, well, at least _one _of you cretins is at least somewhat cultured. I'll expect at least you to treat me with the respect I deserve, then," she said, haughtily sticking her nose in the air and crossing her arms.

"Yeah, Weiss Schnee, of the SDC. I, um… I like your sword?" Shirou tried to put forth as a peace offering. Weiss just sighed and dropped her arms, so it might not have worked, but at the very least, it seemed to snap Ruby out of it.

"Sword? Ooh, sword, where?" She zipped away from Yang, her grudge at least temporarily forgotten.

"It's a Multi-Action Dust Rapier," Shirou explained to the excitable girl. "Incredibly durable for its weight, and an excellent channeling tool for powder-type Dust, usually used in conjunction with an especially Dust compatible Semblance."

"Th-that's right," Weiss said, surprised, her hand falling to Myrtenaster's hilt. "Hmm. Cultured indeed. You would do well to follow his lead," she said, turning up her nose once more at Ruby, but she couldn't hide the small smile as the younger girl continued to coo over her rapier.

"It's really pretty, Weiss! Did you build it yourself?" She asked.

"Well, not exactly. I did modify it, however, to better suit my own style. It used to be my mother's."

Ruby nodded. "The craftsmanship is excellent. You can hardly tell where the customizations begin and the original begins – there are hardly any tool marks. It's a piece of art."

"You integrated the revolving Dust chamber into the space where a chamber for a firearm used to be, right?" Shirou asked with an appraising look. "Clever work. A similar enough concept to be nearly seamless, and using the fullers that were carved to help guide bullets as Dust application channels is particularly inspired. You must have an incredibly versatile semblance to be able to make use of so many different types of Dust effectively."

"And you managed the installation without leaving a single mark on the quillion-cage! It must have been like putting together a ship in a bottle!" Ruby continued.

Weiss preened under their praise, slightly flustered. "Thank you. Why, yes, it was very difficult. B-but not for me, of course. It's only expected that a Schnee like me would be able to do such a thing."

"Does it have a name? And I'm really sorry about earlier, it honestly was an accident. " Ruby applied the power of puppy-dog eyes to her heartfelt apology.

"Her name is Myrtenaster." Her expression softened further. "Hmph. Perhaps I may have misjudged you a bit too harshly. If you want to make it up to me, here. Read this." She slapped a piece of paper down into Ruby's hand. "It's a pamphlet detailing safe Dust-handling procedures. Just for the record, the Schnee Dust Company is not legally responsible for any accidents that occur due to the mishandling of SDC Dust."

Yang smiled at what she saw as a peace offering. "See, Rubes? Two friends already. You're doing just fine."

Weiss scoffed. "Hardly. But a Schnee _does _understand the value of having allies, so perhaps I could continue to grace you with my presence, on occasion."

Something about this girl kind of reminded him of Rin.

Further conversation was stalled by Ozpin beginning the introductory speech.

"Ahem… I'll keep this brief. You have traveled here today in search of knowledge. To hone your craft and acquire new skills. And when you have finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people.

"But I look amongst you and all I see is wasted energy, in need of purpose, direction. You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school will prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you to take the first step."

Huh. Kind of a weird tone for an opening speech, Shirou thought, as Ozpin left the stage to a distinct lack of applause. Glynda took his place at the microphone. "You will gather in the ballroom tonight. Tomorrow, your initiation begins. Be ready. You are dismissed."

Students immediately scattered. As Shirou left the auditorium, however, he noted that they were all pretty much walking off in random directions. He turned around to see Ruby smiling at him expectantly next to Yang, and realized Weiss hadn't yet left their small group either.

"Alright, if you guys need help finding the ballroom, follow me," he said with a chuckle.

o-o-o-o-o

Thanks to Shirou's guidance, they were some of the first students to arrive and stake out sleeping spots, so they all ended up near each other in one of the corners of the room. Yang and Ruby had fairly standard sleeping bags, but Weiss set up what was practically a private pavilion. Shirou rolled out a futon directly against the wall.

He looked over at the girls camped near him, all of whom had changed into their sleepwear. He felt a little awkward about sleeping so close to girls his own age without a wall separating them, but he supposed the dorms were four to a room and there was a good chance he might end up grouped with at least one girl, so he might as well get used to it.

Speaking of potential teammates, the prospective students had all been assigned a locker in which to put their gear – for Shirou, being surrounded by so many prospective students, each with their own unique weapon, it was like being in the weapons store all over again, but even better.

For Ruby, he imagined, it would be much the same, perhaps with an added hint of excitement that she would soon be able to see them in action.

For himself, who could sympathize with the entire accumulated history of a weapon, each new weapon he saw was like being treated to in depth knowledge of each person's fighting style, not to mention some rudimentary knowledge about the wielder themselves. For the weapons that Unlimited Blade Works was capable of copying, it was like _learning_ those fighting styles himself, provided he decide to trace a copy of a weapon.

If the weapons in the shop were appetizers, interesting enough but lacking depth, then each of his classmates' weapons was a hearty entrée. Naturally, however, some meals tasted better than others.

He looked around the crowded ballroom, noting the individuals that had stood out to him worth remembering. One good example to highlight the disparity between some of the students was Cardin Winchester and Nora Valkyrie. Both used a heavy blunt weapon, both using explosive mechanisms within the weapon to add extra power to their blows – but besides that, they were a world apart. Cardin was a brawler, whose entire style just relied on using brute strength to beat his enemies into submission. Nora took the concept and refined it into a work of art – riding her hammer through the air on the force of explosions like an acrobat. As a girl even smaller than Ruby, it was like she was more of a conductor than a warrior, letting the massive weapon fight for itself under her expert guidance, and content to let it pull her along for the ride.

Cardin's mace was like a chained attack dog that only knew one command; kill. Nora's hammer, Magnhild, was more like an oversized, incredibly eager puppy, with a master who had learned how to harness that eagerness _perfectly_ and was able to run it through incredibly complex commands using only subtle nudges and prompts.

While Cardin's mace might have been _content_ to follow its master's commands, Nora's hammer was _happy _to. Despite the fact that Cardin probably weighed three times as much as Nora, or more, and was just as proportionally stronger, Shirou had no doubts who would win in a fair fight between the two. Also, Magnhild turned into a grenade launcher, but he thought she would win even without that.

He scanned the ballroom and found Nora, an excitable girl with bright orange hair (And there certainly were a lot of redheads in Remnant, now that he thought about it, weren't there?) bouncing on an air mattress next to another person he'd thought worth remembering, Lie Ren. Wielder of StormFlower, a pair of automatic pistols with wickedly sharp blades attached, and one of the only other students that Shirou thought looked definitely Asian, like he himself did. The weapons seemed simple, but their history spoke to a great deal of martial skill.

Well, Nora appeared to already be fairly attached to him. He wasn't sure how the partners and groups were selected, but assuming the students had any say in the matter, it seemed like a fair bet they would end together. He wouldn't have minded either of them as a partner, but he also wasn't about to poach some other girl's man, or vice versa.

Cardin, along with a small group of three of his friends, also seemed to be aiming to group together. He'd noted from their weapons earlier that they all were coincidentally named after birds. None of them were without skill – in fact, he'd put them all in the upper half of the initiates, easily – but none of them were particularly _inspired, _either.

If Cardin's mace was a strictly worse version of Magnhild, then each of Russel Thrush's Dust daggers were like the cheap, store-bought versions of Weiss' Myrtenaster. Sky Lark had a pretty basic halberd that turned into a gun, and Dove Bronzewing – potentially the most skilled of the four – had a sword that shot bullets, which was not quite the same as turning into a gun, and actually made it easier for Shirou to add the weapon to his reality marble. Not that that would bias his opinion on which was the strongest, or anything like that. No, really.

They all had potential, but they would be _far _from his first choice of teammates.

That really only left a few notable individuals left, if he discounted Ruby and Yang for the fact that they would probably want to partner together, being sisters and all.

There was Weiss, obviously. It would almost be like working with Rin – heiress to a family line specializing in working with prana-infused gemstones, haughty attitude, piercing blue eyes, a resting bitch-face that she somehow pulled off to make it look good, not-so-well-hidden desire for acceptance and respect – scratch that, it would almost _exactly_ be like working with Rin.

He would be fine with that, he supposed. There was also the fact that literally the only people he'd seen her speak to thus far were Yang and Ruby, and even now she was just kind of awkwardly sitting in her pavilion near them rather than actively engaging with them. She seemed kind of lonely. Maybe he could partner with her, and then group together with Yang and Ruby.

And then there were two others – both with more combat experience under their belts than anybody else in the room, bar each other and him, and he didn't really count because everyone else's experience _was_ his experience if he copied their weapons.

Sitting with a candle against the far wall, nose buried in a book, was a girl in a black nightdress, a huge black bow perched atop her head. Her eyes were a similar color to his, amber, but perhaps slightly more yellow. Her weapon was Gambol Shroud, a Variant Ballistic Chain Scythe, and was one of the most complicated weapons he'd ever had the pleasure of analyzing. It was some kind of pistol/katana hybrid sheathed inside a cleaver, and could somehow also be configured to act as a kusarigama. According to the weapon's history, the girl, Blake Belladonna, was some kind of Faunus ex-terrorist who'd been fighting for equality since she was a small child, but was now trying to turn over a new leaf for some reason and become a Huntress.

He actually felt a little bad about reading that off the weapon. It was clearly a personal secret, and he'd accidentally discovered it with little more than a glance. He snorted as he considered how many SDC robots the blade had cut down and imagined how Weiss would react if she ever found out. He also scanned her for the animal features that would supposedly mark her as a Faunus, but none immediately sprung out at him besides the yellow tint to her eyes. Then again, it didn't seem that strange eye colors were all that uncommon on Remnant.

Oh, and now she was being approached by Ruby and Yang. Weiss had awkwardly followed them over and was standing a fair distance away trying to look disinterested, but neither of the sisters had noticed her anyways. Interesting – why had they approached her? Maybe the girls had also noticed the confidence Blake held herself with and were also scouting out potential teammates?

And the final person that had caught his interest… He scanned the ballroom again, but didn't see her. Hmm.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

He looked to his left, and met a pair of green eyes framed by rich red hair tied back in a ponytail. She was sitting next to him, a short distance away down the wall, and wore a comfortable looking solid orange pair of flannel pajamas that hugged an athletic figure. The scent of her prana was nearly mistaken for blood – but no, it was just iron. Strong, unyielding. He liked it – he imagined it would be similar to what he would smell like, considering his elemental affinity was 'sword.' He also detected a whiff of strawberry shampoo, although that was entirely mundane.

The person he'd just been thinking about.

Pyrrha Nikos. Wielder of Miló and Akoúo̱, a short sword that turned into a javelin that turned into a spear and its partner, a shield. Both were painted gold and scarlet, hiding the steel alloy underneath that was used with some sort of telekinetic – no, magnetic – semblance for unparalleled weapon control. Undefeated Mistralian tournament champion, four years running. Undoubtedly the most skilled student in the room – and he was including himself in that. In raw skill, he was certainly outclassed here. He would need to trace some pretty bullshit weapons to be able to beat her in a fight, and would also have to rule out using anything made of iron or steel if he didn't want to lose control of his weapon mid-battle.

"Oh, sorry, didn't see you there. Just, you know, sizing up the crowd," he replied after a moment of hesitation. "Shirou. Nice to meet you."

She smiled. It looked shyer than he would have expected on someone so skilled and accomplished. "Pyrrha, and likewise."

She paused for a second. "I saw you looking at me in the locker room."

What.

Blood rushed to his cheeks. "I-it's not what it looked like! Your weapon, I was looking at your weapon!"

She looked confused for a second before she suddenly blushed as well. "No! No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you were – I know! That's what I meant, that I saw you looking at my weapon!"

Shirou sighed in relief. After spending enough time with Saber, Rin, Sakura, Illya, Taiga, and Rider, he'd developed a pretty light trigger on his danger sense when women were involved.

"For a minute, I thought you'd recognized me, but I'd seen you staring at everybody else's weapons the same way," she continued. "And then after you were done staring at it, it seemed like you did recognize me, but it was like you didn't really care… you just moved on to the next weapon."

Hmm. She was perceptive. "Umm… sorry?" he offered. He wasn't really sure where she was going with this, but it was probably better to play it safe.

"No!" Her eyes widened. "You don't need to be sorry! It was… refreshing, actually. Most people, when they recognize me, they want to… take advantage of me, I guess. I could see Weiss staring at me like a piece of meat. You, on the other hand, seemed more interested in my sword than you were with me."

The smile she wore was now almost teasing, mostly masking the shyness.

He laughed sheepishly. "Yeah, I'm kind of a weapons nut. I didn't grow up around here, so I don't really care too much about tournaments or whatever, but your equipment is all really beautiful."

Her smile widened, ever so slightly. "Thanks. I know it probably doesn't mean much to you, but I appreciate hearing that from someone." He couldn't tell whether she bore a faint blush or whether it was just the soft light of the ballroom reflecting off her pale features. "So, sizing up the crowd, huh?"

"Yeah. I've kind of been trying to figure out who I think would work well together, predict who I think will end up in groups."

She leaned a little bit forward. "Hmm? Scoping out potential partners, then?" she asked, managing to disguise most of the eagerness in her tone.

"Yeah. It seems like a lot of people are already spoken for, though," he said, gesturing once over at Nora and Ren, then at Cardin's gang, and then over at Ruby and Yang, who were now getting yelled at by Weiss over something that he was sure was just a tsundere attempt to get them to notice her, with Blake watching them exasperatedly.

Pyrrha gave a cute little snort at his final gesture. "I'm not so sure about that last one."

"You'd be surprised," he said, laughing along with her.

"So…" She hugged her knees to her chest, head still tilted to look at him. "You're still… on the market, then?" Her smile once more took on the shy undertones it had when she first spoke to him.

"I am." He smiled back. "You?"

She just nodded a little as she continued to smile. They sat like that for a few more seconds, before on the other side of the hall, Blake finally blew out her candle, which Shirou realized was the last light source left in the ballroom. Everything went black, and he heard Pyrrha getting to her feet.

"Goodnight, Shirou," she whispered as she softly padded off further into the darkness. "See you tomorrow."

She was gone before he could respond, but he did anyways, whispering to the empty air.

"Goodnight."

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou buckled on his greaves in the busy locker room.

To his left, Nora was saying something to Ren about sloths and the noises they make. Somewhere off to his right, he heard Ruby yelling at Yang about how she "absolutely did not need to break out of her shell." He glanced over, and a little closer to him he could see Weiss, with her back turned to him, trying to schmooze up to Pyrrha as the latter was strapping on her bracers.

He shot the redhead a sympathetic grin over Weiss' shoulder, and received one in turn, but the Schnee heiress seemed to interpret the sincere smile on Pyrrha's face as having been meant for her, if the subsequent cackling was anything to go by.

"Fine! Then I'll just partner with Shirou!" he heard, as Ruby stomped over to him.

He chuckled at her perturbed expression. "Hey, what was that all about?"

"Stupid Yang said she didn't want to be on a team with me! Hmph! Luckily, _she,_" she paused there to stare poignantly back at her sister, "is not my only friend! So if she wants to play hard to get, it's her loss!"

The minute Ruby had turned back around to speak directly to him, Yang blatantly winked at him and showed him a double thumbs up, which left him a little bit confused.

Suddenly, a javelin caught him by the red mantle of his armor, jerking him backwards and away from Ruby and pinning him against the back wall of the locker room, near the exit.

"Oops! Sorry, Shirou!" Pyrrha said as she jogged over to him. "My hand slipped!"

She pulled the spear out of the wall and helped him to his feet, before whispering, a little quieter, "Sorry, and thanks, I needed an excuse to get away from Weiss." He saw that her eyes flickered in that direction as she spoke, but if he wasn't mistaken, they might have landed on Ruby instead.

Before he could respond, the intercom buzzed on. "Would all first year students please report to Beacon Cliff for initiation? Again, all first year students report to Beacon Cliff Immediately," Glynda's voice intoned.

"Come on, Shirou, let's go," Pyrrha said with a cheery smile, ushering him towards the door.

Behind him, out of his sight, Yang laughed as Ruby crossed her arms and stared petulantly at Pyrrha's retreating back.

o-o-o-o-o

The students stood on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the forest Shirou had first arrived in. They stood in a long line, each atop their own square, metal platform set along the cliff's edge. Shirou stood at the far right edge.

"For years, you have trained to become warriors. Today, your abilities will be evaluated in the Emerald Forest," Headmaster Ozpin told them from his position in front of their line.

"Now, I'm sure many of you have heard rumors about the assignment of teams," Glynda chimed in. "Well, allow us to put an end to your confusion. Each of you will be given teammates… today."

Several students leaned forwards excitedly. Several others recoiled in fear, Ruby among them.

"These teammates will be with you for the rest of your time here at Beacon," Ozpin continued, "So it is in your best interest to be paired with someone with whom you will work well. That being said…"

He dropped one more hammer-blow onto his captive audience. "The first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next four years."

"What?!" Ruby squawked. The exclamation was echoed by several other students.

"After you've partnered up," droned on Ozpin, nonplussed, "Make your way to the Northern end of the forest. You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path… or you _will _die. You will be monitored and graded for the duration of your initiation, but our instructors will _not_ intervene. You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path, containing several relics. Each pair must choose one, and return to the top of the cliff. We will regard that item, as well as your standing, and grade you appropriately."

Huh. Well, that was certainly… a novel approach to a school initiation.

Let fate decide your partner, huh? It reminded Shirou of a man he'd heard about once, who whenever he received a stack of applications for his company would instantly throw out half before even looking at them, under the justification that he 'didn't want unlucky people working for him.'

"Are there any questions?" Ozpin asked, and then continued without even pausing for breath. "Good! Now, take your positions!"

One by one, the metal platforms sprung up with incredible force, launching the students in an arc far into the forest.

Shirou was last. As the sound of catapults firing grew steadily closer to him, he activated his magic circuits.

"_Trace, On!"_

o-o-o-o-o

Ruby fired forwards rapidly to reduce her momentum before hooking her scythe around a thick branch, spinning around it to bleed off the rest, and then flipped down to the forest floor gracefully.

Weiss summoned a series of hard-light glyphs, springing off them at successively lesser angles, her speed slowing with each one until she stepped casually off the last to fall the last few feet.

Lie Ren corkscrewed around the trunk of a thick tree, secured by the blades of Stormflower, dusting himself off as he reached the bottom.

Yang used the shotguns in her gauntlets to propel herself forward, rocketing far ahead of any of the other students, finally springing off a few trees and rolling forward on the ground before continuing to sprint forward without even breaking stride.

Pyrrha simply held forth Akoúo̱, smashing directly through three trees in a row before rolling along a thick branch of a fourth. She needed to keep a high vantage point, after all. She shifted Miló into its rifle form, scanning through the scope for her target.

'_Where was he, where was he…' _The panic slowly grew. How could she have missed him? He was the last to be launched, she had to have landed before him!

Just as she was about to give up, she caught sight of something slowly floating down, still quite a ways above the canopy.

She broke into a grin, and began to move towards where she thought he would land.

She wasn't sure when her future partner had managed to find a parachute, but he was certainly resourceful.

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou lazily floated through the air, high above the Emerald Forest, enjoying watching all the interesting landing strategies his fellow students had come up with.

Man, projection sure was useful!

o-o-o-o-o

"Yang or Shirou, Yang or Shirou, Yang or Shirou…" Ruby repeated their names like a mantra as she sprinted through the forest. "Yaaaaang! Shirouuuu!" Occasionally she interspersed the chant with a call, in the desperate hope that one of them would hear her.

Ugh, who would design a system like this? The _first person you make eye contact with?_ What if she couldn't find either of them? What if someone else found them first?

Well, there was always Blake? She seemed kind of nice, if a bit antisocial, but Ruby wasn't really one to talk on that front. Very mysterious and calm.

Who else was there? Well, there was that redhead who had snatched Shirou away from her before she had a chance to come up with a plan for how they'd find each other, for one!

She let out a small growl, completely disregarding the fact that that had happened before they even knew what the test was going to be.

Besides them, there was…

She skidded to a halt in a small clearing, just as its occupant slowly turned around to face her.

"Oh… hey, Weiss…"

The heiress simply sighed. The two stared at each other for a heavy second. "Well, come on, then," Weiss said as she began to stalk off into the bushes. "This still doesn't make us friends, though," she called back over her shoulder.

Ruby smiled faintly. Well, at least ever since Shirou and she had flattered Weiss about her weapon and "given her the respect she deserved," she was a little less in danger of being shouted at. It probably wouldn't be the _worst _thing ever, to be partnered with her. And besides, there were still two more slots on her team for Shirou and Yang!

o-o-o-o-o

Pyrrha leaned lazily against a tree, staring bemusedly up into the sky. Like a leaf on the wind, Shirou slowly fluttered down, at least until his chute was snagged on a branch. The parachute suddenly dissolved in a flurry of blue sparks, and Shirou fell the last few meters to the ground, landing in a smooth crouch.

"Oh, hey, Pyrrha. What a coincidence. Guess that makes us partners, huh?"

_Mission complete._

o-o-o-o-o

Yang performed a textbook back-handspring away from the wild swipe of one of the two Ursae she was fighting. "Jeeze, you two couldn't hit the broadside of a baaa…"

A single golden hair fluttered to the ground in front of her, and her eyes flashed red with a berserker rage. "_You monster!"_

One thoroughly pummeled Ursa later, she turned to its compatriot. "What, you want some too? Bring it!"

There was a meaty _sch-thunk_ noise, and her last foe fell to the ground, some sort of pistol-scythe embedded in its back. Attached to the pistol by a black ribbon was the black-haired girl she and Ruby had spoken to the night before. Blake.

"I could have taken him, you know." Yang smiled at her new partner.

o-o-o-o-o

"You take the ones on the left, I get the ones on the right?" Ruby asked, referring to the pack of Beowolves that had somehow taken them by surprise.

"Ruby, we're completely surrounded. Where does left end and right begin?" Weiss complained.

"We'll meet in the middle! Bet I get further into your side of the circle!"

"Hmph!" The heiress smirked, not even deigning to respond as she chambered red Dust into Myrtenaster and lunged forwards.

At her back, she heard the signature bark of a high-caliber rifle and an excited "Woohoo!"

o-o-o-o-o

Lie Ren finished dispatching the King Taijitu that had attacked him, a giant snake Grimm with a head on each end of its body.

As he once again dusted himself off, he heard a strange noise coming from the tree above him. "Qrrraaww! Qrrraaww!"

Nora Valkyrie flipped down, hanging from a low-hanging branch by the backs of her knees.

"Nora, I'm still not sure that's the sound a sloth makes."

In response, she merely reached over and tapped his nose with an outstretched finger. "Boop!"

o-o-o-o-o

"It's this way." Weiss paced off in one direction, Ruby diligently following behind.

"I mean, it's this way. Definitely this way." She began to walk at another completely random angle to her first course.

She stopped walking. "Alright, its official, we passed it!"

Ruby hesitantly spoke up. "Um, Weiss? Is it possible that you have no idea where we're going?"

Weiss scoffed. "Of course not! I know exactly where we're going! We're going… to… the forest temple!"

Ruby stared at her, unblinking eyes laced with confusion. Weiss blushed in embarrassment. "Oh, stop that. You don't know where we are either!"

A loud screech echoed around them, emanating from somewhere above.

Both girls looked up, and then back at each other. Ruby offered a hesitant smile. "I might not… but I do have an idea?"

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou and Pyrrha stood outside an entrance to a cave at the base of a medium-sized hill. The rocks surrounding the cave entrance were covered in carvings, depicting a horde of humans wielding spears locked in combat with a scorpion the size of a rhino.

"Think this is it?" Shirou asked. "It doesn't really look like a temple, but the temple could be underground. Some kind of 'we have defeated our mighty foe, let us create a monument to our glory' type thing," he gestured at the carvings.

Pyrrha bowed, and swept a hand towards the cave opening. "By all means, lead the way."

Shirou, his body already running hot from reinforcement, pulsed a bit more prana through his circuits, tracing a simple but powerful glow-stick.

Pyrrha raised an impressed eyebrow. "Huh. So that's where the parachute came from too, huh?"

Shirou nodded as they stepped forward into the cave. "Mhmm. Semblance."

"Useful," she noted. "_Really_ useful. Is there anything you can't make?"

"Well, certain things are a lot more pr- Aura intensive than others. And some of the most… complicated… weapons I've seen are a bit beyond my ability. Oh, and I can't make Dust, so even if I made a gun I wouldn't be able to fire it."

"That's still amazing. I can't even imagine how many uses that has! But if you can't make Dust, then what is that?" She pointed at the glow-stick in his hand.

Oh. "Um, it's… well, it works through chemiluminescence…"

She looked at him blankly in the dull green light.

"Uh, let's just chalk it up to a secret technique I discovered when messing with my semblance?"

She snorted. "Fine, keep your secrets. I'll figure them out eventually. We're going to be together for four years, you know," she said, only _slightly_ suggestively, inconspicuously sidling a step closer to him as she did so.

"Hah, well, I suppose that's true. Good luck, though. Some of the stuff I can do I only know because… well, let's just say my homeland did some things differently from how they do them here."

She filed away that mysterious fact to question him about later, but paused and held out a hand to stop him as well. "Shirou, do you feel that?"

He hesitated. "I do. It's… warm."

A few meters later, the dull green glow surrounding them started to take on a more golden hue. They turned around a small curve in the cave, and saw ahead of them a second source of luminescence, a strangely pointed object seeming to hover in midair, bobbing softly and emitting a faint golden glow.

"Do you think that's the relic?" asked Pyrrha.

Shirou's eyes narrowed. He traced a second glow-stick in his other hand and tossed it forwards. It clattered to a halt underneath the second light source.

Illuminated in the pale green glow was the silhouette of two massive, crab-like claws, and a tail supporting the golden-glowing stinger arching back further into the darkness. A baleful red glow was added to the mix of faint lights as eight red eyes flicked open.

Wordlessly, both trainee Huntsmen turned and began to sprint back towards the entrance.

They plunged out back into the daylight, barely keeping ahead of the beast behind them. It crashed through the entrance of the cave, obliterating the probably historic cave drawings and begging the question of how it had ever fit inside in the first place.

It was even uglier in the light. First of all, it was closer in size to an elephant, or even a whale. Red-highlighted bone forming huge, blunt ridges covered the majority of the creature's back, creeping halfway up its prehensile tail as well. The tops of the two massive claws were likewise armored, and it had two piercing mandibles even bigger than an elephants tusks.

Despite the danger, Shirou looked sideways at his partner and saw her face flushed with exhilaration, an excited smile gracing her features. He couldn't help but smile in return.

"Hey, Pyrrha!" he called over as they continued to run, trees collapsing as they were overrun behind them.

"Yeah?"

"Want to make an impression?"

"Hah! Of course!" she called back.

"Let's take out its weapons!"

Synchronized, both of them split off at right angles. Shirou deliberately slowed himself down so that it would follow him rather than his partner, his arm glowing greenish-blue as he simultaneously traced Caliburn.

He skidded to a halt, spinning as he did so. He jumped, tucking himself into a ball as he did so, and one claw sliced by above and below him, snapping closed only a short distance to his side. He immediately ducked into a sideways roll, passing underneath the second grasping claw, and raised Caliburn into a slice as he returned to his feet.

The holy blade bit deep into the Grimm's carapace, just at the joint connecting the huge claw to the relatively much smaller limb, where it was coincidentally unarmored by bone. It sliced through the majority of the offending limb, which was left dangling ineffectively.

The stinger swung down at him, but was deflected by Pyrrha, who had doubled back behind the monster. Her thrown shield nudged the strike to one side, the stinger plunging deep into the dirt to his right. Before he had the chance to attack the vulnerable limb, he was forced to raise his sword into a block to his left to deal with the monster's still intact right claw.

The force of the blow still sent him flying a short distance until his back crashed into a tree, but his reinforcement protected him from any major damage, and he charged forward once more.

Pyrrha's weapon, in its sword form, sliced deeply into the Grimm's tail from behind, just above where its bone armor ended. Not enough to sever it, but she continued swinging over and over, each additional strike cutting a little deeper.

It tried to rotate around to the left to address this new threat, so that it could swing across its body with its undamaged right claw, but as it did so, it presented an undefended broadside for Shirou to attack.

Having recovered quickly, he lunged forward, Caliburn held overhead for a powerful downward chop. His aim was true, and this time, he sliced through the weak joint in its entirety. Simultaneously, Akoúo̱, which had somehow returned to Pyrrha's hand after deflecting the stinger, was thrown forth once more, its razor edge managing to separate what little Grimmflesh still secured its other claw to its body.

Both claws, each the size of a hippo in their own right, clattered to the ground and began to dissolve. The beast let out a terrible shriek, and once more plunged its stinger down towards Shirou.

This time, he handled the deflection himself, parrying the barbed stinger to one side, and Pyrrha took advantage of the fully flexed rear appendage to deliver a particularly devastating strike. With the final blow, the upper half of the tail was completely severed.

Shirou and Pyrrha strafed around the wounded behemoth to regroup, both noting the other's smiles as they did so. "Well, what now?" Pyrrha asked as they drew close.

"I know we just met yesterday, but… do you trust me?" Shirou looked her in the eyes as he dismissed Caliburn into a swirl of blue sparks with a cocky smirk.

"Hah! Sure, why not?" she answered, stepping forward to bat aside one of the beast's remaining eight less dangerous legs with her shield.

Shirou's arm glowed once more. "_Trace, On!"_

In each of his hands appeared a nondescript iron nail, connected to each other by a sizable length of chain, and his mind flushed with a fraction of the skill of the weapon's original wielder – Medusa, the Gorgon.

That fraction would be enough.

o-o-o-o-o

Blake and Yang stood in the small, open-air stone structure that seemed to be the temple they were searching for. Around them were several pedestals, each supporting what they assumed to be one of the relics they were sent here to receive.

"Chess pieces?" Blake asked.

"Some of them are missing," Yang mentioned. "Looks like we weren't the first ones here."

"Well… I guess we should pick one."

"Hmm…" Yang surveyed the available choices, before setting on the gold colored knight piece. "How about a cute little pony?"

"Sure," Blake smiled. Not like it mattered which one they picked, after all.

"That wasn't too hard," Yang observed.

"Well, it's not like this place is very difficult to find."

A faint screaming reached their ears, carried by the wind.

"Blake, do you hear that?" Yang turned to her partner as it grew steadily louder. "What should we do?"

Blake was staring straight up, standing frozen. She raised a finger to point in the same direction she was looking and rapidly jabbed it upwards.

Swiftly falling towards them were both Ruby and Weiss, the former screaming wildly and the latter suffering in silence. Yang ran towards them in an attempt to catch her sister, but a few meters before they hit the ground, a series of glyphs appeared in the air, each one partially overlapping the next, forming a curve that slowly leveled out to the ground.

Both girls slid down the hard-light curve – well, Ruby mostly tumbled, would be a better word – but they both made it to the ground safely.

Blake ran up to stand beside her partner. "Did your sister just fall from the sky?"

"Ruby! Where did you come from?" Yang called over to her sister.

"Wha?" Ruby, still addled from the fall, eloquently replied.

"We jumped off _that!" _Weiss shouted back, covering for her.

Yang looked up into the sky, and for the first time noticed the _Giant Nevermore,_ a raven-like Grimm the size of a Bullhead, circling around the ruins.

"You did _what?!" _Yang screamed.

Suddenly, on the far side of the clearing the ruins were located in, several trees started to topple. Yang heard the sounds of ferocious growling approaching, and readied her gauntlets –

"_Yeeeeeeehaw!" _There was a burst of purple lightning, and from between the felled trees staggered out the biggest Ursa Yang had ever seen. It swung its meaty paws around wildly and took a few more steps into the clearing before finally collapsing. A small girl with orange hair, dressed in pink, rolled off the fallen beast's back.

Nora came to her feet and looked back at her erstwhile mount. "Aww, the horsey's broken," she pouted.

Ren extricated himself from the fallen Ursa's back as Nora poked and prodded at the 'horsey,' placing a hand on one of its bone spurs to steady himself. "Nora? Please… don't ever do that again."

Yang turned to Blake with a small scowl as Nora ran towards the relics. Whatever she was about to say was interrupted by Nora grabbing the second golden knight piece. "Oooh, a neeeew pony for Nooooraaa!" the hyperactive hammer-wielder sang as she claimed her relic.

"Did everybody but us ride here on a Grimm?" Yang asked in exasperation.

Blake just stood, body still as a statue, and performed the same jerky pointing motion she had when signaling Ruby's fall, but in this case directed towards the opposite side of the clearing from Nora and Ren's entrance.

Yang, already expecting the worst, sighed and turned to follow the pointer.

Yep. More falling trees, more noises approaching – same excited whoops, same splintering wood, and a high-pitched screech instead of the growls of an Ursa.

Into the clearing burst an absolutely _gargantuan _Deathstalker, but… disarmed? No. Yang refused. That was a bad pun, even for her. Regardless, it was missing the two claws that should have been present on its forelimbs, and even the tail with its deadly stinger had been severed halfway up its length.

And… Yang sighed, and pressed a gauntleted hand over her face.

Seated behind one of the huge bone ridges traversing the Grimm's back was Pyrrha Nikos, whooping and hollering, with both hands thrown in the air.

Directly in front of her was one Emiya Shirou, currently grasping the strangest set of reins she'd ever seen – a long chain was held in one hand, stretching off in both directions. Each half of the chain was symmetrically wrapped around one of the Deathstalker's mandibles, before stretching out further and truncating in a metal nail that was pierced deep into one of the Grimm's equally truncated forelimbs, just behind where the claws would normally be.

His other hand was up in the air, like a cowboy riding a bull.

Somehow, he corralled the wildly bucking monster closer and closer to the small group that had congregated in front of the ruins. Just before it reached them, the chains suddenly disappeared with a blue light effect, and in their place, Shirou held a beautiful sword with a blue and gold hilt.

"Pyrrha, now!" he called out, using the momentum of one of the scorpion's bucks to jump high in the air, coming down with a two-handed falling thrust of his sword right between all eight of the Deathstalker's eyes.

Behind him, Pyrrha smoothly used the same motion to propel herself even higher than he had, performing a graceful flip in midair as she passed over her partner. Just as Shirou finished driving the blade as deep as his strength allowed through the bony carapace, she plunged down like a meteor, the ball of one foot slamming down onto the pommel of the sword and driving it the rest of the way into whatever excuse for a brain the abomination had.

She bounced off the pommel, and rolled to a stop on the grass, landing flat on her back. Shirou likewise threw himself forward, rolling next to her, as behind them the crippled Deathstalker collapsed and Shirou's sword dissipated.

Both of them were giggling madly.

"Hah… I can't… believe… I just did that!" Pyrrha managed to gasp out.

"See? I _told _you we could ride it all the way to the relics!" Shirou proclaimed, setting off the both of them into more laughter.

"So cool…" Ruby mumbled as she stared at them, mouth agape.

Yang fired off both gauntlets into the air with a thunderous boom, at least temporarily silencing everybody else. "I can't _take_ it anymore! Could everybody just _chill out_ for two seconds before anything crazy happens again?"

If anything, she was really just jealous that _she _hadn't thought to tame a Grimm, but she wasn't about to tell them that.

One second passed. Another. Yang relaxed slightly.

Everybody suddenly scattered to avoid the hail of razor sharp feathers that suddenly rained down around them, accompanied by a screech of the giant Nevermore as it plunged down towards them.

"_Damn it!" _Yang yelled, rising out of her roll to the side. She scanned the others for injuries – everyone was fine, but Ruby's long cloak had been pinned by one of the oversized quills, yanking her off her feet as she tried to dash away, and the Nevermore was swooping right for her!

Yang's eyes widened in terror. She wouldn't be able to make it in time. She pushed forwards off her back foot in a pointless attempt to anyways.

Something white streaked past her on the left, and something much smaller, the color of burnished gold, did so on the right.

Before Yang could blink, the Schnee girl was standing to Ruby's left, plunging her rapier into the ground and summoning a thick wall of ice in the path of the grasping talons of the Nevermore's right foot.

In the same moment, Shirou rolled to his feet on Ruby's right, legs braced for impact, and arm outstretched behind him – where it met a perfectly thrown shield, which slid onto his arm like it belonged there, before he swung it around to his front. Apparently, Shirou and Pyrrha had worked out some impressive teamwork in the short time they'd been together.

Both the ice wall and the shield held, stopping the massive monster's momentum entirely. It tumbled out of the air, head over hallux, with an indignant squawk. Blake and Ren peppered it with bullets as it fell.

"Nora!" the green-clad boy called out, and then gestured at Yang once he had his partner's attention. She locked eyes with Nora, who nodded with an excited smile. Time to try out some teamwork for herself.

She threw herself into the air, body parallel to the ground and feet locked together, head pointing towards the Nevermore as it struggled to rise under the hail of bullets. At the apex of Yang's leap, Nora swung her hammer like a baseball bat at the bottom of Yang's feet, punctuating the impact with an explosion.

Yang used Aura to shield herself from the explosive force, and rocketed off towards the overgrown chicken. The human missile let out a roar of fury, increasing her speed even further by firing backwards with her gauntlets.

"_Don't! Touch! My! Sister!" _She screamed into the wind. The impact of her fist against the underside of the Nevermore's beak was quite possibly the hardest she'd ever punched anything in her life, and would have been enough to pulverize every bone in her arm – possibly her whole body – if she hadn't had so much Aura.

The Nevermore had no such protection. To the other students, it was visible as nothing more than a black blur as it shot off across the clearing, moving nearly as fast as Yang had been. It impacted the tree line with a mighty crash, penetrating into the forest and being buried by the trunks of the trees it brought down around it. Judging from the screeching, it somehow still wasn't dead, but it would be out of commission for a while, at least.

"Thanks, guys," Ruby said to Shirou and Weiss with a small blush.

"Hmph. If we're going to do this, we're going to have to do it together," Weiss replied. "It wouldn't do for me to lose my partner before initiation was even over. I'll expect hard work from now on, however, so it won't happen again."

Ruby nodded happily. "I won't let you down! I promise!"

"I take it these are the relics?" Shirou said from where he had wandered over to the ruins. He tossed Akoúo̱ back to Pyrrha, who caught it with a smile, and then picked up a golden rook piece and weighed it in one hand.

Ruby dashed over in a flutter of rose petals. "Ooh, shiny!" she exclaimed as she grabbed a matching piece from a neighboring plinth. In her wake, Weiss rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as well.

The other students regrouped inside the ruins. "Well, now we just need to get back to the cliffs, right?" Blake asked.

Shirou and Pyrrha shared a glance with each other, and then turned towards the pile of trees covering the still struggling Nevermore, before Pyrrha started to giggle again.

With a flash of light from his right arm, Shirou once more held a pair of iron nails connected by a chain. "Well, the Emiya Express may be out of business…" He looked over at the evaporating corpse of the Deathstalker. "But is anyone else up for a ride on Emiya Airlines?" He rattled his chain in the direction of the Nevermore.

Yang and Nora pumped their fists in the air and then high-fived each other as Weiss put her palm to her forehead. "Not again…" she grumbled. Ren and Blake both nodded hesitantly.

Ruby's eyes lit up. "Dibs on steering!"

o-o-o-o-o

Ozpin sipped his hot chocolate bemusedly as he watched a giant Nevermore come to a crashing landing on the cliff face a short distance away from him.

Glynda, beside him, wore her shock more openly.

On the Grimm's back sat six students, holding on to each other for support. The one in front, Blake Belladonna, had wrapped the ribbon of her weapon around the beast's body, and was acting as the anchor to which the other five had fastened themselves.

Slightly ahead of them sat Emiya Shirou, with his own pair of reins, a chain that had been wrapped several times around the bird's neck, with two nails that had been plunged deep into its shoulder muscles. Every time the Grimm so much as twitched in a rebellious manner, he masterfully jerked the chain in such a way that it remained on course.

And, even further ahead of him, was perched Ruby Rose, her massive scythe hooked directly under the Nevermore's neck for purchase. She stood, one foot slightly forward, like an adventurer might on the prow of a mighty ship, her other hand pointing forwards confidently in the direction she wished to steer.

The Grimm crashed down hard, skidding forward several meters. Ozpin saw Shirou turn around with a smile and shout something to his classmates that was met with whoops and cheers. Blake retracted her ribbon, and the six of them all vaulted, rolled, or flipped off the monster in their own styles.

When they were clear, Shirou shouted something to Ruby, and rolled forward over the bird's shoulder, bringing the chain with him as he did. He harshly yanked the monster's head down, and in the same moment Ruby fired downwards, the recoil jerking her scythe up against its neck. The opposite forces acting in tandem with the razor edge of Crescent Rose cleanly decapitated the ancient Grimm. Ruby flipped once in the air, and landed gracefully next to Shirou as he rose from his crouch.

All eight of them gathered around each other, cheering and laughing and offering each other high-fives. Ozpin watched happily as even the more reticent members of their group, such as Ren, Blake, and Weiss, all bore open smiles, and took at least some small part in the merrymaking.

Ozpin took another long sip, using his mug to hide the wide smile that he bore.

This certainly was an interesting crop of students.

o-o-o-o-o

"**C**ardin Winchester. **R**ussel Thrush. **D**ove Bronzewing. Sky **L**ark." Ozpin paused as the four students called approached the stage, and stood in a line in front of him, their faces projected on the screen behind him. "The four of you retrieved the black bishop pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as… Team CRDL [Cardinal], led by… Cardin Winchester."

Polite applause filled the amphitheater as the four men in question bowed, and the white screen behind their team name faded into the cheery, cherry red of a cardinal's breast.

"**R**uby Rose. **E**miya Shirou. Weiss **S**chnee. Pyrrha **N**ikos."

Ruby bounced excitedly as they took to the stage, smiling up at the boy who stood beside her. He smiled back, and reached over to ruffle her hair playfully.

Her face lit up. On stage, no less! How dare he!

"The four of you retrieved the white rook pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as… Team RESN [Resin]! Led by…"

"Ruby Rose!"

Ruby Froze.

Her? The team leader? But, out of all of them, wasn't she the weakest? Pyrrha was amazing, Weiss had saved her life, and Shirou was Shirou! She didn't even notice the dismayed look Weiss shot her, as she was distracted by the hooting and hollering coming from Yang in the front row.

"_Woohoo! That's my sister!" _

Behind her, the screen surrounding their names and faces lit up, the rich honey-gold color of pure amber. The same color as Shirou's eyes, she noticed idly amidst her shock.

She allowed her team to lead her off stage, still reeling.

Ozpin continued. "And finally, Lie **R**en. Nora **V**alkyrie. **B**lake Belladonna. **Y**ang Xiao-Long."

The final team took the stage. "The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as… Team RVBY [Ruby], led by Lie Ren." The screen changed to a deep, rich red, darker than team CRDL's had.

Ruby's mouth dropped. Double not fair! Not only was she stuck being team leader amongst three people infinitely more qualified than her, but her sister's team got to steal her name? If she had to be leader, couldn't she at least be on the team _named after her_?!

"Looks like things are shaping up to be… an _interesting _year."

o-o-o-o-o

**Early second chapter! I always get really excited when I first start something. Don't expect this pace to keep up, but enjoy it while it lasts! Thanks for the reviews, please keep leaving them and I'll try to get back to any questions you have asap!**

**Sorry, no Jaune... at least in Beacon. You know how much Ozpin likes his wildcards. Even after accepting the mysterious stranger from a crashed rocket that suspiciously completely disintegrated, he had one slot left, but when forced to weigh the choice between the child prodigy with silver eyes and the dude with fake transcripts, he made the obvious choice. Gotta have four people per team, after all. That's not to say he's out of the story completely, however!**


	3. Chapter 3

Shirou woke up early, like he always did.

It was around 5:30, the perfect time to head out to his shed and do some magecraft training, work out in his dojo, and then get back to the house and help Sakura with breakfast. Then, he would either train some more with Saber, or maybe invite Rin over for some more instruction on magecraft...

Except he no longer had a shed, or a dojo. Or an adorable kohai to cook with, or a beautiful, famous knight for a partner, or a tsundere magus to teach him the mysteries of the universe.

Although, now that he thought about it…

He looked around the small dorm room that would presumably be his home for the next four years.

Against the wall closest to him was Pyrrha's bed. She was once more wearing her figure-hugging, low-cut orange pajamas. Her blanket covered her only up to her waist, exposing a flash of pale skin where her shirt had ridden up slightly. Her hair was down, and pooled around her face in a vibrant splash of red. She hugged a pillow to her chest, and bore a faint smile even in sleep. Her eyes fluttered – she must have been having a good dream.

There were differences between her and Saber, to be sure, but still, his new partner _was_ a champion swordswoman, and even just from their first conversation, Shirou had learned how much she felt the pressures of that position. Always striving to live up to an impossible ideal, and yearning for a more normal life… Plus, there were those soft green eyes…

Shirou occupied one of the two beds in the middle of the room. To his other side was Ruby, in a black tank-top emblazoned with a pink heart over her chest and a pair of tight white cotton pants printed with rose blossoms. She apparently was an… _animated_ sleeper, as her blankets were entangled with her in a knot that made his head hurt to try and figure out, and idly made him wonder if he would need to Trace Alexander the Great's sword to get her out. Also, he was pretty sure her head had been facing the other side of the bed when she'd gone to sleep.

Ruby, he supposed, was also a cute underclassman, albeit one who was a little more exuberant than Sakura had been – and nowhere near as, um, full-bodied. Despite that exuberance, however, she was still painfully shy at times. He wondered if she was like what Sakura would have been if she had grown up with Rin, rather than the Matou family. If she had had an older sister with a powerful personality like Yang, instead of an abusive older brother, would she, too, have been capable of sometimes overcoming her natural shyness when it came to her passions?

Finally, against the far wall, was Weiss. She slept demurely, curled into a dainty ball with her hands sandwiched between her face and the pillow. Her powder-blue nightdress was embroidered with the Schnee family emblem, a pure white snowflake, and her white hair flowed down her back with not a strand out of place – a picture of perfect contrast to the mess that was Ruby.

Shirou let out a silent snort as he compared the girl once more to Rin, wondering if she would display the same morning habits as the girl from his previous world – that is to say, being a complete zombie until plied with tea or coffee.

He looked down in contemplation, imagining what the three girls from his world would say if they could see him now. He winced. He could predict their complaints clearly – barely more than a week in, and already finding a replacement for all three of us, hmm? For shame, Shirou.

And then would come the _pain._

_Not replacements,_ he told himself. Never that. All three of them would forever hold a special place in his heart – but so, too, would his adoptive father's smile. The smile that was his first memory, and one that never faded even the slightest bit with time.

If it was to follow his dream, to save people that needed to be saved, then he would take that option every time, even if it meant leaving behind the people that he sincerely loved. After all, it wasn't like he was abandoning them to die, he just… wouldn't be in their life anymore. Although, he did know that Grail-kun was in this world, mucking about somewhere… if it had brought him here, couldn't it bring others as well? Although, that was maybe more of a long term goal.

He thought of that Archer's words – _kill a hundred to save a thousand – _and likened them to his own situation. _Make three unhappy, to save many – potentially an entire world?_ It was a price that he would have to pay, even if it tore at his heart to do so.

Besides, they couldn't be replacements. It wasn't as if any of the three admittedly beautiful women sleeping in his room were interested in him romantically, right?

Drawing comfort from his own denseness, he rose silently from his bed with a carefree smile. He slept shirtless, wearing the athletic shorts that he had bought in town. He quickly pulled out the matching black shirt and the teal jacket with black sleeves from the small bag that held all of his worldly possessions, and slipped them on before leaving the room.

While he'd been the only non-staff resident of Beacon, he'd just trained out in one of the many courtyards that dotted the campus. Now that the school term was starting, he figured he might need to find a new spot, but this early in the day it should still be alright. He reached a nearby courtyard and was pleased to find it empty.

He started out with stretches, before working into progressively more intense calisthenics – sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, any other kind of -ups he could think of – and, finally, Traced a mundane shinai and began to practice his sword forms.

While he could draw on a weapon's history to reproduce the skills of its original wielder, he still needed to have a body capable of utilizing those skills, after all. Additionally, while he wasn't quite sure how it worked for Aura users, Reinforcement was a multiplicative force rather than an additive one. The more fit and powerful his body was in its natural state, the greater the gains he could expect to see from his Reinforcement.

He assumed Aura worked under a similar principle, if only due to the fact that every single other student in Beacon seemed to be at the height of physical fitness. Or was it the other way around? Was it Aura that molded a body into a perfectly fit state, after activation? Would he be seen as strange for doing something as mundane as exercising?

Well, either way, it was necessary for him, so he persevered. Considering that he could copy a weapon's skills, practicing sword forms might be seen as unnecessary by some, but one of the biggest downsides of Tracing was the time that it took for him to materialize a weapon. He was slowly working on his own sword skills, such that even when bereft of a Traced weapon, he was not without some ability to defend himself.

Or to defend others, as the case may be. It had certainly worked out well yesterday, when he had used Pyrrha's shield to deflect the Nevermore's attack, using only his own skill.

That was another thing that intrigued him. From what he'd seen so far, almost all the Huntsmen and Huntresses on Remnant displayed an incredible capacity for teamwork. With a single word, or even a single glance, it was like people could convey entire plans to each other and then work in tandem to execute them. Somehow, he'd _known_ that Pyrrha would throw him her shield, and beyond that, known exactly where it would be when he extended his arm to catch it.

Was that an aspect of the fact that people wore their souls outside of their bodies? If so, how was it that he was included in that collective of souls, when his own was busy coursing through specifically designed channels?

Was it just that everybody had complete trust in each other when it came to fighting the Grimm, due to the fact that they were a clear enemy of all humanity? He wondered if that same level of coordination would translate when it came to fighting human opponents. He and Ruby had certainly worked well against Roman Torchwick and his annoyingly weaponless, slinky-red-dress-wearing compatriot, after all, each having saved each other's life during the fight at least once.

He gently pushed such thoughts from his mind. All that mattered in the here and now was that he improve with his sword, that he train his body and his instincts until he could save everybody.

He idly wondered if the school had an archery range. Kyudo, for him, was even better than sword forms as a method of clearing his mind. And anyways, just because he'd never once missed a target with his bow, barring an enemy dodging after he'd already fired, that wasn't an excuse not to practice.

He dismissed the shinai, tracing a much more slender wooden blade in its place, and going through several forms involving quick piercing strikes and acrobatic dodges. After a lunge-backflip-back-handspring combination, he released that sword as well, tracing a wooden xiphos style sword and a simple round wooden shield in its place, blocking imaginary attacks and striking forward at imaginary openings. At the end of a particularly inspired series of attacks, he altered the blade of the sword, elongating and rounding it until it resembled a javelin, and lunged forward in an overhand throw. Just before the weapon impacted one of the trees in the courtyard, center-mass, it dissolved in a shimmer of blue light.

He considered tracing a scythe as well, but honestly, without the capability to fire Dust rounds, it wasn't the best choice of weapon, and he wouldn't get much out of practicing with it. He had, at least, managed to gain some insight into the fighting styles of his other two teammates.

He panted in the still empty courtyard, covered in a thin film of sweat. At some point during his training, the sun had risen – judging by its position, nearly two hours had passed. His teammates should probably be waking up around now.

As he made his way back to his room, he made a slight detour to pass through the school kitchens. He greeted a few of the more senior cooks, the ones who stayed on even during the school break to cook for the professors, who recognized him from the previous week. Even in that short time, he had become something of a fixture in the kitchens, often stopping by to whip up some food for himself.

He asked them about Dust, remembering the food products he'd seen on the shelves of the store during the robbery. Apparently, the wonder-gem could even be used to enhance meals. In the same way that he smelled red Dust as cinnamon, for example, food-grade red Dust could be used to add an exotic twist to many dishes in favor of the more mundane spice.

He made a mental note to try out some Dust-infused recipes in the future.

Today, however, he was running somewhat short on time, and resolved to simply try out the standard school breakfast with his team after he cleaned up.

Finally, he returned to his room at around 8:00, using his school-issued scroll to unlock the door.

He was treated to a scene of chaos.

For some reason, all four of their beds had been stacked into a ramshackle pile in the very center of the room. The rear wall of the room sported several posters, and their window curtains were marked by a fresh pair of stitches across their whole length. One side of the room held a display case filled with various trophies, and the other proudly upheld a few full-sized, expensive looking oil paintings on canvas, as well as a hefty stack of Dust cases.

"… What?"

That was all he managed to get out before he was tackled in another of Ruby's quickly-becoming-signature super-speed hugs. "Shirou! You're alive!"

"Why… wouldn't I be?" He hesitantly asked as he and Ruby both returned to their feet. He noticed that Ruby, like the other two girls, was fully dressed in her school uniform.

"I don't know! None of us did! We woke up and we couldn't find you anywhere, or any of your stuff! Weiss thought you'd abandoned us!"

Weiss crossed her arms and scowled at having been thrown under the bus, but Ruby continued without drawing a breath. "We basically overturned the whole room looking for you, but there was nothing to be found! And then since everything was a mess already, Pyrrha suggested that we might as well unpack and decorate and wait for you to come back, because she was sure you wouldn't just leave us with no explanation!"

Pyrrha, in contrast to Weiss, smiled at Ruby's characterization of her, and nodded at Shirou. The tiny reaper continued, still oblivious to her teammates. "So, Shirou, where were you? And wherever you were, why'd you take all your luggage with you?"

Shirou bemusedly shook his head. "Ruby, I can see my bag right over there. You know, where my bed used to be?" He pointed at the small plastic bag lying against the wall.

"Well yeah, _duh, _we found that, but that was it! Where's the rest of your stuff?"

"Umm… that's actually all I have."

Ruby froze, staring at him. Pyrrha and Weiss mirrored her conflicted expression. Ruby, perhaps trying to act her role as team leader, tried to push forwards regardless. "But, Shirou… that's just a couple of pairs of clothes. You don't have _any_ personal stuff?"

Shirou shook his head again. "Umm, it's kind of a tough story, but no. I don't."

Everybody stared at him expectantly.

He sighed. "Really? You're sure you want to hear it? You don't want to, I don't know, maybe grab breakfast first or something?"

Weiss spoke up. "Shirou, as your teammates, I believe we would rather know more about you than less. Especially if it's something that might come up later and impact our performance, it would be best for us to know promptly."

Pyrrha nodded. "What Weiss is trying to say, Shirou, is that we'd be happy to hear about anything that might be bothering you, so we can work through it together, as a team." Weiss let out a small "Hmph!" and looked away, but still offered a small nod in return.

Of the three, only Ruby seemed to have some inkling about how the following story was to go, due to his brief explanation of his circumstances a couple of days ago. Her eyes in particular blended sadness – or was it sympathy? – With a burning curiosity.

Shirou let out a single exhalation of breath, midway between a sigh and a barking laugh. "Fine. I guess you're right, Weiss, Pyrrha. Well, I suppose it can't hurt. I come from a place called Fuyuki. You've probably never heard of it, it was a long way from here."

The girls leaned forward as his story began to capture their attention. He was careful to dance around the truth – telling no falsehoods, but not revealing his entire history. "Our town was fairly large, but… a bit removed from the world of Remnant as a whole. We didn't even have a combat school. In fact, out of everyone who lived there, only a handful of us had the skills that would have been necessary to combat the Grimm." Assuming that it would take a magus to fight them, at least.

"A short time ago… there was a battle. I fought, as did… I suppose the total was… well, there was somewhere between ten and fifteen of us. In the end, Fuyuki was just… gone. A pile of burning rubble. I was one of the last few still on my feet, and of the others, I suspect one of them just died standing up, and was too stubborn to fall down." He referred to Berserker, of course, whose final life had ended with one hand outstretched to the heavens, with a barely conscious Illya slung over the other shoulder. He was also one of the few Servants to have actually perished in their game-show brawl.

He thought he could see tears welling up in Ruby's eyes, but decided to just push forward and try to end the story now. To rip the band-aid off in one motion, as it were. "I summoned one last sword, and stepped forward to confront the thing that had started the entire battle in the first place… but it wasn't enough. The next thing I knew, I was being shoved inside some kind of ship, and it had taken off. I woke up when it crash-landed in the Emerald Forest. This all happened about a week ago."

The room was dead silent. Someone could have heard a pin drop. "Besides my combat gear and the clothes I'm wearing now, the clothes in that bag are all I own, including my school uniform. I bought them just before I first met Ruby."

Pyrrha crossed the room while he was still talking. She enveloped him in a warm hug, a second before Ruby impacted him from the side and joined in. Over Pyrrha's shoulder, he could see Weiss with a distressed expression on her face as she circled around the small group and awkwardly patted him on the back.

Shirou snorted. "Hey, stop. Guys, seriously, it's fine. I'll be alright, don't worry about me."

"Stupid," Ruby mumbled into his shoulder. Pyrrha nodded.

"And unacceptable!" their team leader continued. He looked down at her, slightly confused.

"Your team leader demands that you find some way to personalize your portion of the room!"

Shirou pulled himself away from the three-and-a-half person hug, chuckling lightly. "Are you sure? It doesn't really look like there's a lot of space left for any more personal items. Or our beds, now that I look at it again."

Ruby punched his arm. "You think I didn't think of that? We're going to make bunk beds!"

Weiss sighed. "Ruby, I told you. I refuse to agree to this before putting it to a vote."

"Well, it would free up a lot of space…" Pyrrha spoke up.

Ruby stared up at him with hopeful silver eyes. How could Shirou say no to a face like that? "As long as it's safe," he laughed. Weiss deflated a little bit.

"To answer your earlier question, I was out training. I'm going to take a shower, if none of you want it. I'll help you set up bunk beds when I'm out." He ruffled her hair playfully as he walked towards their bathroom, snagging his bag of clothes as he did so.

Around ten minutes later, as he left the bathroom in his school uniform feeling refreshed, he couldn't help but let out a sigh.

In the brief time he was gone, somehow, Ruby had procured several ropes, and then miraculously used those to suspend her bed from the ceiling, a couple meters off the floor of the room. She was currently trying to affix a sort of makeshift canopy, made of a spare sheet, to those same ropes under Weiss' critical gaze.

Weiss' plain bed below it, seemingly untouched, seemed like a decidedly unsafe place to sleep. He was glad he wasn't on that side of the room, at least.

Pyrrha, meanwhile, was still sizing up their own side of the room. Admittedly, without resorting to desperate tactics like Ruby had, it wasn't easy to turn beds into bunk beds. "So, what are you thinking?" he asked as he walked up to stand beside her.

"Not sure," she mused. "Simply stacking them, bedpost to bedpost, would be highly unstable. Not to mention the fact that there wouldn't be much room for the occupant of the lower bed. Ideally, we'd have some way to safely suspend the upper bed while still maintaining a fair distance between the two. Like Ruby did… except sane."

Shirou laughed at her joke. "Well, if I had the materials, I don't think it would be very hard to make a few braces that we could use."

"Really?" Pyrrha asked with a smile. "I've heard that Professor Port is the man to speak to if you need repair parts for your weapon. He might be able to get you the materials you need."

"Excellent. I'll ask him after class." The two of them sat and watched Ruby finish constructing the deathtrap above Weiss' bed. Only then did she finally look over to their side of the room and notice the distinct lack of bunk beds.

"Hey! What are you two doing? You both agreed!"

"We're planning on making our side a little bit different than yours," Shirou explained. "Don't worry, we'll have it done by the end of the day."

Weiss raised her hand. "Umm, Shirou? Would you mind maybe fixing… _this _while you're at it?"

Ruby gasped. "Weiss! How could you! It's perfect!"

Weiss' eyes were uncharacteristically pleading as she looked at Shirou, ignoring her partner.

Shirou laughed. "I'll see what I can do. I'll see one of the professors about getting some sheets of metal. Speaking of which, don't we have class soon?"

Ruby nodded. "Yep, at 9:00 we've got Grimm Studies with Professor Port!"

Weiss flicked out her scroll. "We'd better get moving, then. It's already 8:45."

"No time for breakfast, then," Shirou sighed as he followed the rest of his team out the door.

o-o-o-o-o

They got to class a few minutes early, finding seats next to each other. It was a lecture hall style classroom, and the whiteboards at the front were covered in annotated sketches of various types of Grimm.

Professor Peter Port himself was… portly. He wore a burgundy suit reminiscent of a military uniform trimmed with gold, and the grey-haired, impressively mustachioed man was one of the first, if not the only, Huntsman Shirou had seen that was overweight. The man was seemingly heavily muscled beneath the slightly chubby exterior, however, and the weapon hung on the wall – a combination between a blunderbuss and a battle-axe – spoke to the man's skill. It had claimed the lives of thousands of Grimm.

Team RVBY rushed in just before the bell rang, and Professor Port began his lecture.

It was boring stuff, to be honest. As the first lecture, he hadn't expected much, but still. The man rambled on and on about the stuff he'd figured out within minutes of getting access to the school library – which meant that it was knowledge any resident of Beacon really should have already had.

Four safe kingdoms, including Vale. Evil darkness-monsters everywhere else that want to rip people apart. Huntsmen and Huntresses keep the kingdoms safe.

Wait, had the professor just winked at Yang? She looked slightly disgusted. Shirou's eyes narrowed. He knew the blonde could take care of herself, but if this skeevy old man tried something with any of _his_ teammates…

Port segued into a story about himself as a young man killing Grimm. It had very little educational value – especially considering Shirou could have just read the story from the man's weapon. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

As the lecture continued, he noticed that Ruby grew progressively more bored. She started out by doodling in her notebook, then switched to dozing off, and then balancing progressively more unwieldy school supplies on the tip of a pencil, which was actually really impressive.

The more Ruby seemed to slack off, the deeper the scowl on Weiss' face grew. Shirou frowned. Why was she getting so annoyed? It couldn't have been because she thought Ruby should be paying attention, because Weiss wasn't either. In fact, her full attention seemed to be focused on her leader.

Now that he thought about it, she kind of had been in a bad mood ever since they became a team. They'd been too tired when they were first assigned to their dorm last night for it to be an issue, and this morning he'd distracted them with his heavily edited life's story, but the hints had been there, now that he viewed them in hindsight. But what was it that had her upset?

"So! Who amongst you fancies themselves a true Huntsman or Huntress?"

Port's question, the first time he'd interacted with the class for the entire lecture, broke Shirou from his musings, and seemed to do the same for Weiss. Her hand shot up into the air immediately. "I do, sir!"

"Well then, let's find out!" He gestured her forwards to the stage, lugging out a massive steel cage as he did so. "Go get changed into your combat gear, and then come face your opponent!"

Weiss was back a few minutes later in her white dress, and her high heels. Shirou couldn't help but wonder a bit at that – it almost seemed like her school uniform would be easier to fight in. Still, he'd seen her in action, and she made it work somehow, so who was he to judge?

"Go Weiss!" Pyrrha shouted from beside him.

"Fight well!" he pitched in.

"Yeah! Represent team RESN!" Ruby cheered.

Weiss turned to her with a frown, ignoring himself and Pyrrha. "Ruby, I'm trying to focus!"

Hmm. That was strange, he thought, as Ruby sank down in her seat sheepishly and mumbled out an apology. He patted one of her shoulders to comfort her.

"Alright! Let the match… begin!" Port slashed down with his battle-axe, shearing the lock off the metal cage. With a growling snort, the Grimm inside charged out, directly at Weiss.

It was shaped like a wild boar, and was of a like size, with huge, curving tusks spiraling up from its mouth. Its entire back was covered in nearly interlocking bone plates, like a set of scale armor. A Boarbatusk, based on the rudimentary research into the Grimm he'd done beforehand and the diagram on the board.

Weiss slashed at it and rolled to one side to dodge the wild charge, but her rapier sparked off of one of the bones ineffectively. She took to her feet as the beast came back around for another spin.

"Hang in there Weiss!" Ruby shouted. He saw the duelist's frown grow, and he squeezed Ruby's shoulder. When she turned to look at him, he shook his head slightly. He wasn't sure why Weiss was annoyed with her in particular, but it probably wasn't a good idea to let that annoyance continue to grow.

Weiss ran forward to meet the Grimm's second charge, thrusting forward with Myrtenaster, but the blade once more sparked off. This time, however, whether by skill on the monster's part or just plain bad luck, she somehow got her weapon locked between the boar's massive tusks.

With a mighty wrench of its head, it ripped the blade from her grasp, sending the weapon flying behind it to the other end of the stage. "Oho, now what will you do, without your weapon?" Port chuckled from the sidelines.

Weiss barely managed to roll out of the way of another charge, sprinting towards Myrtenaster as the boar tried to reorient itself. She jumped into a slide, grabbing the weapon as she passed it.

Next to Shirou, Ruby's eyes shone with worry. Disregarding his warning, she shot to her feet. "Weiss, go for its belly! There's no armor underneath—"

"_Stop telling me what to do!" _Weiss paused in her fight to shout directly at Ruby. The silver-eyed girl fell back to her seat in shock, looking like she'd been slapped.

The Grimm's next charge was slightly unconventional, in that it rolled forward rapidly like a wheel made of jagged bone. Weiss summoned a glyph as a shield and crouched down behind it – when the boar bounced off it and fell onto its back, she jumped up and backwards, summoning another behind her as she did so. She sprung forwards off of it, plunging her sword to the hilt in the beast's soft underbelly. It died with a drawn-out squeal.

The classroom was silent, but for Weiss' labored breathing, only for a moment.

"Bravo, bravo!" Port broke the silence. "It appears we are indeed in the presence of a true huntress in training. I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today. Class dismissed. Remember to do the assigned readings, and stay vigilant!"

Weiss shot one last glance towards Ruby before stalking off into the hallway. The other three members of Team RESN shared worried looks before hurriedly packing up and going after her.

They caught up with her just as she rounded a corner in the hallway. Ruby rushed forward, hand outstretched. "Weiss, what's wrong with you? Why are you being–"

"What's wrong with me? What's wrong with _you! _You're—"

"Nope." Shirou stepped between the two girls. "Our room. Now. We're going to sit down and talk through our issues like adults, instead of shouting at each other in the hallway like children."

Weiss at least had the good grace to look a little chagrined at his rebuke. Still, she sniffed haughtily and followed in silence as Shirou led the way.

Entering their room, Shirou gestured for everybody to take a seat. They did so, either on beds or desk chairs, as he tried to gauge their moods. Weiss still looked pissed, Ruby seemed sad and confused, and if anything, Pyrrha had it worst. She looked worried and uncertain, and beneath that there was a subtle terror. Did she think it was her fault somehow? Or was she just that scared that her new team would fracture so suddenly after forming?

"Alright. Weiss, you're first. Something's been bothering you all day, and you snapped unfairly at Ruby during class. Why?" He asked, keeping his tone judgment free despite his condemnation of her actions.

Weiss flushed a little, tilting her head away so that she wasn't facing anybody in particular and crossing her arms over her chest. "I should have been team leader."

Ruby shrunk down even lower in her chair, staring at the ground. Shirou gestured for Weiss to continue.

"She did _nothing _to earn her position. I've studied, I've trained – leadership is in my _blood._ Even after the explosion when we landed, I made my peace with being on a team with her. It's… not personal…" She finally looked towards the girl in question. "And I'll admit that you're at least _somewhat _competent. But that position should have been mine. I would have even been fine with Shirou or Pyrrha being made leader, but instead, I'm being told what to do by a fifteen-year-old child who got into Beacon on a fluke!"

She finally ran out of steam. When Ruby raised her head to meet the heiress' icy gaze, there were the hints of tears forming in her eyes.

"…Do you think I _asked _for this? Do you think I _wanted _to be leader?" Ruby half spoke, half sobbed.

Weiss seemed taken aback, eyes widening, as Ruby continued. "Do you think I don't know that I'm the least qualified of all of us to be a leader? I'm not blind, Weiss."

She let out a self-deprecating chuckle as a tear rolled down her cheek. "I don't know how to be a leader. Even with _this_, I'd be lost if Shirou wasn't here to mediate. It's been _one day,_ and I've been doing my best, I tried to cheer you on and be helpful and you didn't even give me a _chance._"

She sniffled and wiped her nose with one sleeve, falling silent.

"Weiss, do you think Professor Ozpin is an idiot?" Shirou asked, cutting in.

Startled, she turned to him. "N-no, I…"

"Have you considered that there might be a _reason _he made Ruby leader instead of any of us?"

She clearly didn't know how to respond, so he continued. "Think about it, Weiss. You've already been trained as a leader, you said so yourself. What more would you gain from being our leader, besides a stroke to your ego? This is a _school. _We're here to improve in the areas we're weak. Ruby, who's been suddenly thrust a full two years ahead, could actually _use _some leadership experience, and she's set herself to the task with gusto. Meanwhile, you're throwing a temper tantrum like a spoiled child who didn't get everything she wanted."

She recoiled, as if his words had physically slapped her. He drove home one final strike before falling silent. "Maybe instead of being envious over what you already have, you should try to improve in the areas that _you're _weak. Like in being a good teammate to your partner."

He stood from his chair. "Come on, Pyrrha. I think we should give them a little time alone to sort things out."

The redhead followed him out the door, sending one worried look back at the two silent girls, who sat like statues.

o-o-o-o-o

The door clicked shut. Weiss sighed, and cradled her head in her hands. She let the silence continue for a minute as she let everything Shirou had said sink in, before she finally broke the ice that had formed between them. "I'm sorry."

Ruby looked at her with those oh-so-expressive eyes, and Weiss didn't like what she saw reflected in their mirror sheen.

She let out another long sigh. "I'm really sorry, Ruby. Shirou was right. I've done nothing but be mean to you from the moment I first saw you." She fell silent again.

"I-it's alright…" Ruby hesitantly spoke up.

"No, it's not alright. I… I know it's not a very good excuse, but… I was raised in a very strict household. I have an older sister, who should have been the Schnee heiress, but when she was of age, she ran away and joined the military. My father disowned her."

Ruby let out a small gasp, of shock or anger – Weiss couldn't tell which.

"I actually always wanted bunk beds as a kid. My father never allowed it." She offered Ruby a weak smile and inclined her head towards the unholy contraption that took up their side of the room.

She was shocked at how relieved she was to see that small smile returned.

She continued to speak. "When she left… all the responsibilities that she ran away from were suddenly heaped onto me. Since then, I've been told every single day that I need to be perfect, that I must represent the Schnee family in everything that I do. I need to win. I need to lead."

Another pause, another sigh. "I think my father would be pleased to see just how deeply that lesson has apparently been drilled into me." She laughed wryly.

"I… I'm sorry, too, Weiss. I'm sure it's annoying to be told what to do by someone two years younger than you."

"No." Weiss shook her head. "I think you do have the potential to be a good leader."

"R-really?" Ruby asked. Her eyes were wide, scared, like she was desperate for approval and terrified that she might not have it.

Weiss sniffed, once more allowing a little haughtiness to seep into her voice, but the small grin she bore sapped any seriousness it might have held. "Yes, really. And if I have to be perfect, then I'll be the perfect teammate. I'm going to be the best teammate you'll ever have, and Team RESN is going to be the best team Beacon has ever seen."

"Oh, Weiss!" There was an explosion of rose petals, and Weiss suddenly found herself enveloped in a hug, one that she hesitantly returned.

It felt strangely good. Weiss… actually couldn't remember the last time she'd been wrapped in a full hug. It must have been the last time Winter had visited the Schnee manor, but… well, there had been lots of shouting between her father and her sister, and she couldn't remember if they'd even gotten the chance. If they had, it had been brief.

"I'll be the best team leader you'll ever have! Or, I'll try to, at least," Ruby mumbled into her shoulder. "But with you and Shirou and Pyrrha helping me, I think… I think I can do it."

Weiss squeezed the girl a little tighter. Huh, hugging was actually really nice.

The door clicked open, and Shirou and Pyrrha stepped through, the former holding a few long rectangles of sheet metal.

Weiss squawked, and hastily tried to let go of Ruby and push her away. She realized a split second later that Ruby had done the exact same thing. They both ended up on the floor, somehow.

Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she giggled politely.

Shirou looked down at them with a warm smile. "So, all good, then?"

Weiss blushed and nodded as she accepted his outstretched hand and let him pull her to her feet, as he did the same with his other hand to Ruby. She took a step back and dusted her skirt off, before bowing slightly. "Shirou, Pyrrha, I apologize for my unsightly manners, and for any conflict that I may have caused amongst the team. It won't happen again."

Shirou nodded. "Thanks, Weiss. Remember, we're a team. If you have any issues, you can talk to us about them, and we'll sort them out together. We've got your back." Pyrrha and Ruby, behind him, animatedly nodded along with him.

Weiss felt even more heat rise to her cheeks. "Thank you. I'll be sure to do so."

"Now," Shirou said, picking up the metal he'd placed by the door. "Who wants to set up some bunk beds that _aren't _safety hazards before our next class?"

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou pounded another nail through the hole in the metal sheet and into the wood of the bedpost behind it. Pyrrha stood next to him, helping him hold up the bed while he secured the struts that would keep it aloft.

He'd finished Weiss' and Ruby's beds before getting started on his own, just to head off the inevitable collapse before it happened. The two girls were now enjoying their new bunk bed, Ruby dangling over the edge of the top bunk to chat with her while upside-down. Both wore smiles, and even if their conversation was slightly stilted and awkward, they'd get over that in time.

"How'd you do that? With them, I mean," Pyrrha said softly, inclining her head slightly at their teammates. "I thought they were going to explode the second we left them alone, but when we got back, they were _hugging._ How'd you get them to make up so quickly?"

"It wasn't that hard, really," Shirou chuckled. "They didn't even really know what they were fighting over in the first place, so it's only natural that they would make up quickly."

Pyrrha shook her head. "If you hadn't been there… I was really worried, Shirou. I don't want this team to be destroyed before it even really comes together."

"It won't." He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, and she leaned slightly into it. "Weiss… she's a lonely person, I think. Really, what she wants, is people that she can rely on, and that can rely on her in turn. She's not quick to trust, and she uses her icy exterior to try and ward people away from her, but if you stick with her and show her that she can trust you, I don't think you'll find a more loyal friend."

Pyrrha laughed. "You got all that off her in just one day, huh? You must be really good at reading people."

"Hah. In some ways, maybe." Shirou thought back to some of the memories he'd read off of Myrtenaster – the battle Weiss had been forced into with a giant, hollow knight when she told her father that she wanted to attend Beacon. How she'd gotten the scar over her left eye, the only unsightly blemish on her otherwise perfect features. "But in other ways, believe me, I'm as dense as they come. Or at least that's what I was told by… er, never-mind."

"Shirou? What is it?" Pyrrha asked, concerned.

"Nothing. Just… memories. Of Fuyuki. Sorry."

"Oh no – I'm sorry! That was insensitive of me," she said, guilt clear on her face.

Shirou forced out a laugh. "No, you're fine. Really, the people I knew… a pretty huge part of me—" _All of him, really "—_is sure that they're still alive. Some of them are just too stubborn to die, even if they _were _killed. And it's also pretty sure that if they ever saw me here, they'd beat me up for leaving them."

Pyrrha looked conflicted, unsure how to respond to that.

"Don't worry about it. I'm fine, really. Either way… I don't think I'll ever see them again. But I have you all now, right?"

She squeezed him in a quick hug. "That's right, and don't you forget it. What you said to Weiss applies to you too, you know? If you need anything, we'll be here. I'll be here."

"Thanks, Pyrrha," he said with a smile. "Top or bottom?"

"W-what?"

"The bunks. They're done." He gestured behind him at the finished product.

"Oh! Umm, I suppose I'll take the top bunk? If that's alright?"

"Sure." He picked up his tiny bag of clothes from the floor and threw it onto the bottom bed. "Hey, Ruby? Next up is combat class, right?"

"Lunch, first!" Ruby excitedly called back.

o-o-o-o-o

They sat with team RVBY, orchestrated primarily by Yang, who was currently interrogating her little sister about what it was like to be living with her new team.

Shirou wasn't really trying to listen in, but… was it just his imagination, or was Yang bringing up his name in particular a bit too much?

The rest of the table was being regaled by Nora, who was animatedly recounting the tale of how she and Ren had defeated a horde of Ursae, and made a fortune selling their hides as rugs, to an audience with varying levels of interest. Shirou, again, wasn't paying too much attention to her either.

Instead, his full attention was being taken up by the food. It was… disappointing.

He'd tried to fill his plate with a small sample of most of what was available, and was apparently the only one to have taken that route. Pyrrha and Yang had opted for simple salads with cherry tomatoes, Nora had a basic looking sandwich that seemed to be mostly lettuce, and as far as he could tell, Ren and Blake both hadn't taken anything. Perhaps even sadder than that was Weiss' plate, which contained a single green apple, untouched, and Ruby's, which held two cookies – all that was left after she'd scarfed down several more the second they'd sat down.

He poked at his own food, which contained elements of the above, as well as a small piece of chicken and a dollop of mashed potatoes. Nothing was particularly… _bad, _per se. The ingredients were fresh, sure, but the finished products themselves were… uninspired, was probably the best word.

The salad had a basic oil and vinaigrette dressing. The sandwich had a slice of meat, greens, and some mayo. His potatoes contained butter and salt, nothing more, and the chicken was plain. Ruby's cookies looked dry and crumbly, and Weiss' apple… was an apple.

He let out a heavy sigh.

"What's the matter, Shirou? You've been quiet," Pyrrha asked in concern.

"Oh, nothing… it's just… the food." Eyebrows raised all around the table.

"Really?" Ruby asked. "Huh, I didn't take you for the picky type."

He cracked a small smile that quickly faded. "I'm not _picky, _Ruby. I'm just… used to food that's a little better."

Ruby let out a hum of contemplation. "Hmm. Sounds like picky to me!"

Yang and Nora laughed, but Weiss rose to his defense. "I can't say I didn't notice the same thing, Shirou. The fare here is… acceptable, but certainly not up to the standards that I'm used to."

Ruby gasped. "Shirou! Don't tell me – you're secretly some kind of prince, and you grew up in a castle like Weiss did?!"

"Hey!" Weiss exclaimed indignantly, but she didn't seem truly annoyed.

"No, Ruby, nothing like that." He chuckled bemusedly. "I'm not an aristocrat, I'm just used to cooking my own food."

Ruby's eyes sparkled. "Ooh! Can you bake, too?" At his answering nod, she bit her bottom lip, rapidly glancing between what was left of her pile of cookies and at him, expression pleading.

"Yes, fine," he answered the unspoken question with another laugh. "I'll bake you cookies sometime." If nothing else, it would be a good experiment – cookies seemed like a pretty ideal food to try to bake red Dust into.

Weiss stared down at her apple in apparent distaste as Ruby cheered. "And the rest of your teammates, Shirou?" She asked, a slight flush to her cheeks. "I take it you would not be averse to preparing food for us on occasion as well?"

He wasn't the only one that laughed at her not-so-subtle attempt to ask him for food without outright begging for it. "Of course. I was planning on preparing a nice breakfast tomorrow morning, so if we wake up a little earlier than we did today, you can look forward to it."

Yang leaned over and whispered something in Ruby's ear. It was slightly too quiet for him to hear – "_… _material" was all he managed to glean from it – but whatever it was, it caused his teammate to practically glow red and start stammering out unintelligible protests.

He then noticed that Blake, who had been up until this point seemingly engrossed in a book, was staring at him out of the corner of her eyes. The bow on her head was ever so slightly twitching.

Less subtly, to her side, Nora was staring at him with a look of complete yearning. "Pancakes?" she whispered.

He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Oh, sorry. Of course, team RVBY is welcome to join us for breakfast as well?"

Nora cheered and fist bumped Yang as Ren gave him a polite nod of thanks. Blake went back to her book, but he noticed the small smile she now bore.

Suddenly, Shirou was distracted by laughter coming from a few tables away. While not an uncommon sound in the cafeteria, it had an unpleasant, mocking undertone that made Shirou feel like it was out of place.

Sure enough, he zeroed in quickly on the source to find Team CRDL clearly harassing a girl with long brunette hair that fell all down her back. Russel and Cardin were sitting to either side of her, and she clearly felt trapped from the way that she was trying to shrink in on herself and scoot down the bench, although either way she shifted she ended up closer to one of them.

Across the table stood Dove and Sky, the former heartily laughing as the latter held his hands to his head and made weird flapping motions that were undoubtedly some sort of local insult Shirou had never encountered before.

He was headed towards them before he even realized he'd stood up from his seat.

As he approached the scene of the bullying, he finally noticed the long brown ears protruding directly up from the girl's head – rabbit ears.

Oh. Now Sky's mocking gestures made a lot more sense. She was a Faunus. He _had _read that they were discriminated against, but this… in the middle of a school cafeteria for _heroes in training?_ And nobody was doing anything to stop it? He felt a strange sense of déjà vu and anger as he was reminded of his former-friend Shinji, and the bruises he sometimes left on his little sister Sakura.

He drew closer to the table, increasing his pace as the girl let out a cry of pain. Cardin had reached over and grabbed one of her long rabbit ears in his hand, squeezing it tightly.

"Ow, that hurts! Please, stop…"

Cardin didn't let go. "See? I told you they were real," Cardin boasted to the rest of his team, who continued to laugh.

"What a freak," Russel chimed in.

"What are you doing?" Shirou's voice was cold. "Let go of her."

Cardin looked up and down Shirou incredulously, sizing him up, and scoffed loudly. "Excuse me? What did you just say to me, shrimp?"

Shirou noted that the boy had not, in fact, let go of her. Hmm. He could attack Cardin, but if he reacted by yanking back his hand, the girl could be hurt. He needed a way to divert Cardin's anger towards himself, such that his previous victim would be forgotten…

He nodded to himself as he finalized his plan. Without responding to the bully, who was still staring at him expectantly, he turned his back for a moment as he walked to a neighboring table.

Interpreting this as Shirou having backed down, Cardin scoffed again and turned back to his teammates. "Who the hell was that loser?" He asked, yanking his hand slightly and eliciting another cry of pain from the Faunus.

Shirou dumped a carton of milk on the back of Cardin's head. The cafeteria went suddenly silent, except for a few startled gasps.

Well, mission accomplished. Cardin instantly let go of the poor girl's ear as he shot to his feet, spinning to face Shirou once more as he did and grabbing the much smaller boy by the collar of his school uniform.

"What the _fuck _do you think you're doing, you little punk?!" He shouted down at Shirou. He towered over the magus – he must have been thirty centimeters taller.

Shirou ignored the giant bully, staring past him to the Faunus girl, who was looking at him worriedly. With a slight inclination of his head and a flick of his eyes to the side, she got the message, and rushed away.

"I'm gonna fuckin kill you!" Cardin continued to roar.

Finally, Shirou looked up and met his eyes. "You're supposed to be training to be a Huntsman. Huntsmen protect people, they don't hurt them. Have some pride."

"Raaagh!" With a wordless scream, Cardin pulled back his fist.

"_What _is going on here?" Another voice cut in, even icier in tone than Shirou's had been. Both boys turned their heads to see Professor Goodwitch walking towards them, riding crop swishing threateningly at her side. Behind her, staring worriedly, was Ruby. Ah, she must have gone for help. Good thinking.

"Oh, Professor. I tripped and fell as I was passing Cardin with my milk," he lied glibly. "Sorry, Cardin. It won't happen again."

Cardin scowled down at him, but he wasn't quite so stupid as to ignore such an easy out – it was certainly better than detention. "It had better not," he growled as he released Shirou's collar, shoving him away slightly as he did so.

"I see," Glynda said. "Just a misunderstanding, then." Her frown seemed to indicate that she wasn't quite convinced that was the case. "If the both of you have so much excess energy, then perhaps you can work some of that energy off in this afternoon's combat class."

Cardin, still dripping with milk, stared down at Shirou with unbridled fury in his eyes. "Oh, I think that sounds like a _great _idea."

Shirou merely smiled.

o-o-o-o-o

"You may be wondering as to the _necessity _of a combat class, focusing on sparring between human partners, when the goal of Huntsmen and Huntresses is to fight the Grimm."

Glynda Goodwitch paced back and forth on the stage in front of the class, lecturing them with a sharp, serious expression. On their way to class, they'd all stopped by their lockers and gotten changed into their combat gear. Apparently, according to the syllabus Ruby had been given as their leader, this class was slightly more _involved _than Port's was, and Glynda wouldn't tolerate the delays of students leaving the classroom to get changed every time they were called upon to fight.

"The Grimm, after all, are mindless," she continued. "For the most part, they do not plan, they do not learn, and they do not adapt. A Beowolf is a Beowolf – if you can slay one, you should be able to slay any of them."

She slapped her riding crop into her hand. "Or so think many young Huntsmen – those who are _foolish._ In your Grimm Studies class, you will learn the typical behavior of many different types of Grimm. This knowledge will undoubtedly assist you in your future careers. And if you begin to rely on those average behaviors as fact, you will _die._"

She punctuated her harsh words with another slap. The class was deadly silent, all present transfixed by the professor's sincerity.

"If it were that _easy_ to defeat the Grimm, humanity would not be restricted to four relatively small kingdoms! If it were that _simple, _no Huntsman or Huntress would ever die in the line of duty! If hunting Grimm was truly that _mindless, anyone _could do it!"

She paused, both in her speech and her pacing, and cast a critical gaze over the students assembled before her. "There are Grimm who have survived for years. Decades. Centuries. And while we may tout their mindlessness to the populace at large, the huddled masses who _must _believe that they are safe and secure in their homes, that Huntsmen are invincible paragons of humanity who can never fail – for if they do not believe this, those homes will be _set upon _by nightmares given flesh, drawn to their fear – it is not true.

"As a Grimm ages, it grows. In size, in strength – and yes, in skill. Many an overconfident Huntsman, fresh from an academy, secure in their superiority, has fallen to a Grimm that has been alive – if their blighted existence can even be called living – for many times as long as they have. A Grimm that has _fought_ Huntsmen before – and, if not defeated them, at least _survived, _and _learned_ what tactics we typically employ.

"It is for this purpose that combat class exists. You will be pitted against each other, encouraged to use every trick you can come up with to win, or, at least, to survive. You will be forced to adapt to new, unfamiliar combat styles, and adapt quickly. Those of you who cannot react quickly to disadvantageous scenarios – well, in my classroom, you will fail. In the real world, however, you will die."

For the first time, after another brief pause for impact, she cracked a small smile. "I do not want to see my students die. To that end, I expect each and every one of you to give your all in my class."

Shirou nodded appreciatively. It was a good speech, and more impactful and attention-grabbing than anything Professor Port had managed in his entire lesson.

"For the first week of classes, you will be paired with other students in one-on-one spars. I will analyze and critique the fighting styles of everybody in this class, and then assign suitable partners for more long-term training. Four days out of every week, you will train with your assigned partner, and every Friday, during a double-length class session, I will run various scenario matches to evaluate what you have learned. Depending on your performance, your assigned partner for the next week may be changed. Any questions?"

He had a feeling the question was more of a formality than anything. It would be a brave student who dared to raise their hand under the blonde teacher's unwavering stare.

"Excellent. Then, with no further ado, let us begin the first match. Do we have any volunteers?"

Cardin's hand shot up immediately, followed by Shirou's a moment later.

"Mr. Emiya, Mr. Winchester. Please come to the stage."

He stood and approached the stage to cheers from his teammates. Team RVBY, especially Yang, joined in as well. Even Weiss offered a polite word of encouragement. Across the room, Cardin's team did the same for their leader.

He activated his magic circuits, reinforcing himself, and hopped up to the raised platform at the front of the class. Cardin, already there and bristling with anger, pulled the collapsed form of his mace from his side, and with the click of a hidden button, the oversized flanges at the top sprung out to their full size.

"Both of your Aura levels will be projected on the screen above the stage, as well as on your Scrolls, for the duration of the fight. The match will continue until either one of you has left the stage, chosen to surrender, or had their Aura drop into the red – around 15 percent remaining."

As she spoke, Shirou wondered which weapon to use against his opponent. Many of his Noble Phantasms, obviously, were far too deadly to use seriously against an enemy during training – Caliburn was right out, as were many of his other favorite options. The mystically enhanced blades would slice through Aura too easily, and while he was fine utilizing such unfair advantages against the Grimm, he wouldn't learn anything by demolishing his fellow classmates so easily.

He considered using the less powerful ones, or those that didn't specifically have any affinity for slaying humans. Kanshou and Bakuya, with their anti-monster properties, were one such option, but he felt that even they would be overkill.

Besides, he wanted to make this last, after all. He needed to send the bully a message.

"I'm gonna turn you into paste, you damn animal-lover," the much larger boy standing across the ring angrily growled.

Shirou smiled. With a scattering of blue motes of light, his weapon of choice materialized in his hands.

Several students in the audience, especially his friends who had seen him fight in the Emerald Forest, began to laugh.

Cardin flushed red with anger. "Is this some kind of joke?! You think I'm gonna go easy on you if you don't take this seriously, you freak?"

Professor Goodwitch frowned. "Mr. Emiya. If this is misplaced bravado, I must warn you that it will reflect poorly on my grading of your performance."

Shirou shook his head, eyes on his opponent, and slid forward into a Kendo stance. "It isn't, Professor. I assure you, if I intended to underperform, I would not have chosen this sword."

In his hands, he held a rather ordinary looking shinai. In fact, its only defining feature was a tiny strap wrapped around the top of its hilt, from which dangled a tiny pendant of a cute little tiger. The flimsy-looking bamboo sword, in comparison to Cardin's massive weapon, was almost a toy.

It was Tora-Shinai. Favored weapon of one of the most skilled swordswomen he knew back on Earth, second only to Saber herself – Fujimura Taiga, the Tiger of Fuyuki. Granddaughter of a yakuza boss, and undisputed champion of the underground Kendo circuit – she would have been a contender for the official title, as well, if she had not refused to remove the Tiger charm from her weapon, which disqualified her from most official tournaments. His adopted older sister/guardian, and the woman who had first taught him to wield a blade.

Little did they know, the charm was there for her opponents' protection, for her weapon of choice was a demonic sword that would not rest until it had tasted blood, and had been sealed for generations by the Fujimura family. Or at least, that was what she had told him.

Regardless of the truth behind her boasting, it was a fearsome weapon, one that had left countless welts on his body in the past during his training with the sadistic older woman. He purposefully refrained from utilizing the skills he could read off the blade, dedicated to defeating Cardin with his own prowess.

"Very well." Glynda nodded. "Then, let the match… begin!"

Cardin charged forward in a burst of Aura-reinforced speed with a loud war-cry, mace held overhead. It seemed he was intent on ending this fight with a single, crushing blow, flattening the wimp who dared mock and humiliate him.

Shirou's eyes narrowed. In a flicker of motion, he sidestepped the telegraphed blow, and brought his own weapon down in a devastating two-handed strike – onto Cardin's right wrist, subconsciously switching to Japanese as he let out a kiai, simultaneously declaring his intent as well as his target area. "_Kote!"_

Aura protected the body from harm. This was an accepted fact amongst the people of Remnant. However, if it truly fully negated every attack, the defendant would find themselves drained of energy far too rapidly for it to be an effective defense. In order to provide sufficient protection and still remain energy-efficient, Aura had to have some downsides as well.

While Cardin's Aura flared, and prevented him from taking any tangible harm from the blow, it did relatively very little to shield him from the pain.

The sound of Shirou's strike impacting Cardin's wrist was deafening. What should have produced the sound of bamboo striking flesh, a meaty _thwack,_ instead echoed as the mighty roar of a ferocious tiger. With a pained cry, Cardin had no choice but to let go of his weapon, the mace clattering across the floor as he stumbled forwards past Shirou.

He clutched his wrist with his other hand, trying to roll it around to shake off the pain of having been subjected to what would have otherwise been bone-breaking force, as he scrambled after his weapon. While a shinai might not normally have been capable of such power, Shirou _was _currently reinforced to superhuman levels – and Tora-Shinai was no normal shinai.

Shirou stepped back as his opponent passed him, once more sliding into a natural stance, and waited while Cardin scooped up the mace.

"Bastard!" Cardin growled out, tenderly favoring his right hand. He spared a glance to the screen above them, trying to gauge how much Aura he had lost from the powerful blow.

He visibly paled. How was that possible? He'd barely lost a sliver of Aura! With the amount of pain he felt, he should have been missing a large chunk – he'd taken _less_ painful hits before that dropped his aura by ten percent, or more!

Shirou smiled grimly. So, his theory was right. A strike with a shinai would never be as effective as one made with live steel – no matter how painful, a real sword would be worse. Just as he'd expected, Aura was specialized towards negating the sharp edge of most blades, and the deadlier portions of other weapons in a similar manner. No matter how hard he struck with Tora-Shinai, it would remove only a fraction of his target's aura compared to an attack from a proper blade.

Cardin came to a similar realization and grit his teeth. It was a mistake on the midget's part, to try and use such a strategy against him – he could take a little pain, so all it would do was give him more aura to work with while he tried to catch the slippery little bastard!

He charged forward again.

The Tiger of Fuyuki roared once more.

o-o-o-o-o

For a time, the class had been excited, on the edge of their seats. There had been cheers for both sides, whoops and hollers every time Shirou landed a hit or Cardin staggered back to his feet after being knocked down.

By the time the match was stretching into its tenth minute, there was only silence coming from the stands. The only sounds that could be heard were Cardin's labored breathing and occasional war-cries, the _swish-crack_ of the bamboo sword whistling through the air, Shirou's kiais, and the crashing roar that punctuated every strike.

It had gotten to the point where with every blow, students could only wince. Cardin let out a choking cry as his mace once more tumbled from nerveless fingers.

Even Goodwitch occasionally flinched at a particularly devastating blow. She had prompted the larger boy to give up more than once, but each time was met only with an angry shake of the head.

Just like every other time, Shirou refused to capitalize on the opening, simply stepping back and preparing for the next exchange. As he'd taken to doing every so often, he extended an offer as well. "Do you wish to surrender?"

Cardin looked up at the screen once more. He still was hovering around 40 percent Aura, seemingly impossibly. He felt phantom pains all over his body. But… like hell he was going to let this shrimp beat him! He silently stood once more, mace held before him.

"Say what you will about him, he's… certainly stubborn," Ruby whispered to Weiss.

"You can say that again. I'd feel sorry for him if he weren't such an ass," she whispered back, drawing a small giggle from the younger girl.

Shirou rolled his eyes. This had gone on long enough.

He took a sudden step forward. Cardin flinched and stepped back in response. He jolted forward again, and his enemy retreated further.

Finally, he lunged, on the offensive for the first time in their entire fight. Cardin's eyes shot wide open in panic as Shirou darted inside the larger boy's guard, delivering twin strikes to the insides of both wrists.

Cardin's guard flew wide open as he staggered back, his mace clattering to the ground once more, but Shirou wasn't finished moving forwards. He hooked one foot behind Cardin's leg, and drove a shoulder into the center of his chest. The already unbalanced buy fell back with a cry, landing on his back.

Cardin flipped himself over, and began a scrambling crawl towards his weapon, but was halted by Shirou's foot on the small of his back forcing him down to his chest.

The class waited with bated breath, and Glynda stepped forwards. Surely this was the end of the match?

Cardin still feebly struggled to move, refusing to surrender, and Shirou sighed. He casually leaned down, grabbed one of Cardin's ears, and twisted it harshly. A few students gasped as Cardin let out another pained shout.

"Oh hey, look, they're real," Shirou deadpanned.

"I… surrender…" Cardin finally spat out from between grit teeth.

Shirou gauged the level of anger still present in the other boy's eyes and twisted his ear further.

"Ah! What the hell! I said I surrender!" Cardin all but screamed.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I not let go of your ear when you asked me to? That must suck, huh?"

He let go and stepped back, just as Glynda stepped forward. She was scowling. "That's quite enough, Mr. Emiya. You are the victor of this match."

She turned to Cardin. "Overconfidence and stubbornness are not good traits for a warrior, Mr. Winchester. Your pain resistance may be high, but please, in the future, have the good grace to recognize when you are apparently _completely outclassed. _Did you not listen to my lecture at the start of class? Your goal is to _survive,_ if you cannot win. There is a reason why surrendering is allowed."

Cardin seethed as he got to his feet, rubbing his ear.

Glynda turned to Shirou, her gaze still withering.

"And you, Mr. Emiya, I will thank not to turn my class into a joke. In the future, if you outclass your opponent, you will deal with your enemy swiftly and decisively, like a proper huntsman. You _will_ keep your sadism, and your grudges, out of my classroom. See me after class."

Shirou nodded. "Sorry, professor. It won't happen again."

So saying, however, he locked eyes with Cardin. "It won't happen again, will it? There won't be a need for a repeat performance, will there?"

The bully stared him down, but his gaze broke first. "No," he spat out as if the word itself tasted vile, and stomped off the stage.

Shirou allowed his shinai to dissipate and returned to sit by his team as Glynda called up the next pair of combatants.

"That was so cool!" Ruby gushed in a whisper, her hands waving around in a vague approximation of karate chops. "He was all like 'Rawr!' and you were like 'Hi-ya!' and he was all 'Argh!'"

Shirou raised an eyebrow and smiled faintly. "You don't think I maybe went a little too far?"

Pyrrha answered for the rest of the team with a shake of her head. "He deserved it, after what we saw. I can't stand people like him."

Weiss nodded. "Its people like him who drive the Faunus to the lengths that they go to, and people like me who have to suffer for it in the end. If there were no people like him, I don't think the White Fang would exist."

From what Shirou remembered, the White Fang was a pro-Faunus terrorist organization, and he assumed Weiss was referring to the fact that the SDC was one of their favorite targets to attack.

"Thanks, guys. I just… really don't like bullies."

"…Is there a story we should know, there?" Pyrrha asked gently.

Shirou shrugged. "One of my first friends… one day, I found out that he hit his little sister, who was another close friend of mine. Apparently, he got worse and worse the more time she spent at my house… and she would try to spend more time at my house to keep away from him. It was a vicious cycle. When I found out, I ended our friendship and punched him in the face in front of the school. It got me kicked out of the Archery club." He rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I guess seeing that girl being hurt brought back some of the protective instincts I felt for Sakura."

"Sorry," Pyrrha whispered, reaching over to squeeze his hand once. "It must have hit you hard, with everything being so fresh…"

He smiled gratefully at her. "Thanks. Yeah, I guess it did. Well, I think she should be safe now, anyways. Any anger he had for her is probably now pretty squarely set on me."

Pyrrha snorted. "I'd tell you to be careful, but after seeing you dismantle him like that, I don't think you have much to worry about on that front."

"Yeah! Speaking of, Shirou – you _have _to show us your Semblance later!" Ruby cut in. "Like, at first, in the Dust shop, I didn't see what you did, but then on the roof you pulled out a bow, and I was confused because you said you mostly made swords, and then in the forest you had that chain thing but then you _also _had that blue sword and I've been dying to ask you about it! And then you pulled out _that_ thing!"

Shirou smiled at his team leader. "Fine. If you insist, I'll show you some of the swords I can create later."

Ruby let out a tiny squeal of happiness. "Eeee! Only some? How many do you have?"

His smile grew wider.

o-o-o-o-o

He waited in his seat while the rest of the class filed out, his team promising to wait for him outside. Once the classroom was empty, but for him and Glynda, he made his way back up to the stage where she was waiting for him.

"It's a dangerous game you're playing, Mr. Emiya." Her expression, as always, was stern.

"I'm sorry, ma'am?"

"Your team leader was kind enough to explain the situation when she rushed for my assistance, and all but dragged me to the cafeteria. I know that your actions in class today were a part of some attempt to save another student from bullying."

He didn't respond, simply staring back with an unspoken question in his eyes.

"I am not going to condemn you for your actions. There are, however, official channels that can be gone through in cases such as this. Ways to protect your fellow students _without_ opening yourself up to attempts at retribution."

"I wouldn't have had proof," he answered. Glynda raised an eyebrow. "If I'd just gone to a teacher, he would have stopped before you got there, and she would have been too afraid to speak up in her own defense. He probably would have threatened her to keep quiet."

Glynda sighed.

"Now, Cardin knows that if he tries anything to her again, I'll embarrass him again like I did today. Instead, he'll target me."

"And you think that this is an acceptable outcome? That it's alright for bullying to occur, as long as you are the victim? You know I can't punish Cardin now, not after what you did to him during class, and not, as you said, without proof. This vendetta will continue, at least until he has tried something else to get back at you."

"It's not alright. Nobody in training to become a hero should act the way he and his team were today. But yeah, if somebody has to take the brunt of it, I'd rather it was me."

Glynda crossed her arms and shook her head as she sighed once more. "You are dismissed, Mr. Emiya. If anything else does happen, do go to a professor instead of taking on the burden yourself."

She watched his back as he turned to leave, knowing that he wouldn't.

o-o-o-o-o

Jaune sighed heavily as he walked through the door to his small apartment, feet dragging tiredly.

It was around six in the morning. An hour after the end of his shift.

He loosened the red tie that hung around his neck, part of the uniform for his new job. He slipped out of the black suit that made up the rest of it and let it fall to the ground, and took a seat on the side of his bed.

He sighed again and rose reluctantly to hang it up in his tiny closet. His boss would be mad if it was wrinkled when he showed up for tomorrow night's shift.

He returned to the bed and allowed himself to fall back on it in exhaustion. The hard mattress, despite its low quality, felt great after a long night on his feet.

He should probably shower, too, he thought idly. But that could wait until the evening, his morning.

"If only you could see me now, Mom…"

He'd been in Vale for a couple of weeks now. Snuck away from home after stealing his grandfather's sword – not that anyone would miss the dusty old thing, kept in the attic as it was. Him, they might miss, but he'd left a note saying that he was going to make a new life for himself in Vale.

Of course, when he'd done that, he'd expected to have become a Huntsman by now.

It had been such a good plan! Find someone to make him fake transcripts, get accepted to Beacon.

Alright, well, it had been a simple plan, but that just meant fewer moving parts that could have gone wrong.

One of them had, of course. He assumed someone had noticed that his transcripts were fake – because if they hadn't, he _totally _would have gotten in. The transcripts were great – they said he was best in his class!

Hmm… maybe he should have shot for more middle of the line? Something less noticeable?

Well, what was done was done. No sense worrying about it now. So he hadn't become a Huntsman – so what? He'd still found gainful employment!

He now worked as a proud Henchman under Hei Xiong, aka Junior, at the inventively named 'Junior's Club,' one of the hottest nightclubs in vale.

'Hot' in this case had several meanings. It was very popular, certainly, but it also had something of a reputation for shady dealings. In fact, he'd only been accepted because a pretty sizable portion of their staff had been injured in a huge fight just a couple of days before he applied, and because he'd brought his own weapon, which meant one less peon to supply with a basic cleaver.

Basically, he worked as something not too dissimilar from a bouncer. He stood around all night trying to look menacing, maybe flashed a little steel at anyone trying to start trouble, and then relied on the presence of the couple-dozen other henchmen around to back him up if the trouble got started anyways.

It wasn't glamorous, but it was a living… and the Malachite sisters, Junior's bodyguards, were both really pretty, even if he was a little too afraid to try talking to them.

He sighed again as he closed his eyes.

He fell asleep wishing he was a Huntsman.

o-o-o-o-o

Was this… a dream?

It felt like a dream. Like one of those dreams where you dreamed yourself waking up. He tried rubbing his eyes, but nothing seemed to change.

Yep, it had to be a dream. Why else would there be a huge purple monster made of a thick, tar-like sludge at the foot of his bed? And why else would he feel absolutely no fear towards it?

No, rather than fear… he felt an overwhelming desire to speak to it. To confess to it.

To take all his anger at the unfairness of the world, all of his spite and his curses, and to use them to wrap up his wish in a neat little package and present it to the monster – which was staring at him with soulless black eyes and a giant smile from which an endless stream of violet slime poured.

"What's wrong, Jaune-kun?" It shivered oddly, and Jaune felt its voice reverberate in his head.

It sounded so childish, so innocent, so sincere in its desire to know what was troubling him. How could he refuse?

The floodgate broke. He staggered off his bed and sank to his knees in front of the monster, feeling utterly defeated by the world. He sobbed lightly as he spilled forth his frustrations.

"All I wanted was to become a Huntsman, but Beacon wouldn't accept me…"

"Ah, you're so helpless, Jaune-kun~!"

Jaune felt a sudden spike of fear, as whatever calming aura the monster gave off was momentarily suppressed. In front of him, he heard a _thunk_, and looked down to see a kitchen knife.

He stared at it as calm swept over him once more. Had it always been there? How had he missed it before?

The creature's voice sounded inordinately pleased with itself as it spoke into his mind once more.

"Huntsman Creation Kit!"

He looked up and met those soulless eyes once more. "Huh?"

For the first time, the childlike voice took on a sinister tone, as it leaned its bulbous head towards him, and whispered – "_Go show those Grimm who's boss!"_

o-o-o-o-o

He woke up to the sound of his alarm, around three in the afternoon, momentarily disoriented.

Wow. That had been a really weird, vivid dream.

He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and rolled over, only to freeze. His eyes shot open, suddenly fully awake.

There was a kitchen knife embedded deeply in the floor of his apartment.

Hesitantly, slightly shaking, he stood from his bed and approached the implement. He reached out and poked the handle with one finger, pulling it back sharply just in case.

Nothing.

More bravely, now, he grabbed it and pulled it from the floor. It came free with a grunt of effort. However it had been placed there, it had been done so with a great amount of force, considering how deeply it had been thrust in.

Maybe it wasn't a dream after all?

No, it had to be. It was too strange not to be. He must have been sleepwalking or something, stabbed the floor with one of the knives from his small kitchen.

Except, as he nodded at his own logic and walked over to his kitchen to replace it – none of his knives were missing.

He looked down again at the knife he held. It fit… remarkably comfortably, in his hand. It felt slightly warm.

He considered the cryptic advice of his dream monster. "Go show the Grimm who's boss, huh? Interesting…" he mused.

Now that he thought about it, you didn't have to attend Beacon to become a huntsman, did you? He was sure there were plenty of self-taught Huntsmen out there. And how had they learned, if not by fighting the Grimm?

And he had this… really nice knife, now, practically _begging_ to be used. So why not?

Half in a daze, he got dressed. His shift didn't start until nine, so he put on his casual clothing instead of his uniform, blue jeans and a hoodie. As if as an afterthought, he strapped on the few pieces of light armor he'd bought in his naïve excitement to become a Huntsman, which had since just been lying around. The entire time, the knife didn't leave his side.

He walked out of his front door with purpose, in what felt like the first time in a long time. With a goal. The knife was strapped at his waist.

His family sword, Crocea Mors, rested beside his bed, forgotten.

**Hey, third and final speedy bonus chapter for the start of the story, might be a while before the next update. This one was maybe a little too serious for my liking, I'll try to get a little sillier next time. **

**TimeDiver correctly noticed in a PM that Shirou's combat gear is based off of Heroic Spirit EMIYA (Assassin), from F:GO, just a little less heavily armored, for those of you who want a more visual representation. His workout gear is based off of his Capsule Servant clothing. **

**For people talking about the harem route, I'm definitely going to try for it, but keep in mind that's going to be more along the lines of the Badump Super Date plan (with girls vying for his attention, him struggling to choose, and suffering the consequences) rather than a typical harem plot where everyone is just ok sharing. Maybe he'll reach the legendary Good End where some sort of agreement is reached… but it won't be easy. **

**To answer another question, Shirou won't unlock Aura, he'll just use his magecraft instead. I've tried to explain a bit how they differ, but those differences will definitely crop up again later as some kind of a plot point.**

**Good job to the reviewers who managed to pretty much predict my plans for Jaune!  
**


	4. Chapter 4

"You're sure you're alright?" Pyrrha asked as she opened the door to their room, holding it so the other three members of her team could enter.

"Of course," Shirou answered. "I didn't get in any trouble. Professor Goodwitch just wanted to make sure I knew that I was making an enemy of Cardin."

"Really?" asked Weiss as she followed him through the door. "That seems a little irresponsible for a teacher. Either one or both of the involved parties should be punished when such a conflict comes to light, to discourage further escalation."

"Both?! Do you want Shirou to be in trouble?" Ruby scowled at her partner.

"N-no! Of course not! I fully believe Cardin got everything he deserved… and then some." If anyone noticed that she was basically saying he'd gone a little overboard, nobody mentioned it. "I'm just saying that the faculty should be taking _some _steps to end this before someone gets seriously hurt."

"Hey, come on," Shirou pleaded with his team. "Don't worry about it. Cardin messed with a student in the cafeteria, I beat him up a little bit over it. It's basically over already."

"Over?" Weiss asked, raising an eyebrow. "You basically humiliated him in front of everyone in his year. Your little quip at the end of your fight about pulling ears probably didn't do anything to help matters either. Now everyone knows that he's a bully who targets those who won't fight back – do you think he's just going to roll over and accept that hit to his reputation?"

"But it was so coooool!" Ruby chirped, having jumped up to her top bunk. "Nobody's going to pick on that girl again, not if it means risking the wrath of Team RESN! Besides, what can he do, after getting beat that bad? It's pretty clear he won't be able to beat Shirou in a fight."

Pyrrha nodded along with her leader's words, but Weiss frowned. "There are more methods to hurt people than by fighting them head-on, Ruby."

Shirou sat down on his own bed. "Weiss is right. He'll probably try something else, something that doesn't necessarily pit his own strength against me. But really, don't worry about it – I can handle myself."

Pyrrha crossed her arms and frowned. "I don't think any of us doubt that, Shirou. We just want to make sure you're safe. Just because you'll ultimately come out on top doesn't mean you won't be hurt doing so."

"I'll be fine. I promise." The smile he shot her was so carefree and confident that she couldn't help but accept it. "Anyways… I believe I promised to show you all my Semblance?"

Ruby's eyes and smile both widened, and she looked ready to hop off her bed the second a pretty weapon was introduced to the room. Weiss and Pyrrha both looked interested as well, though they couldn't hope to compare to their excitable leader.

"Alright, well, I guess a little bit of explanation is in order," he began. He'd spent a small amount of time trying to come up with an idea of just how it was he could do what he could. His team, which seemed to be loyal so far, would be his first test to see how well that theory held up under scrutiny.

"I've mentioned this to Ruby before, but there was a tragedy when I was a child, involving a great fire, and I don't have any memories from before that." He paused for a moment to register the looks of sadness and sympathy on the faces of the three girls before continuing.

"There's really no sense being upset about that – after all, I can't remember anything prior to it. The point of mentioning it, really, is because who I am today was mostly shaped by the man who adopted and raised me. His name was Kiritsugu." The next part of his story would be the diciest. The part that simultaneously told the most lies, or at least half truths, and also bared the most personal details about himself.

He was kind of excited by the act of telling them. After all, according to Rin, telling anyone else back in his own world would have led to him being dissected on a lab table. Here, however, where every Hunter had a unique mystery all to their own, he could truly display his own abilities.

"To really understand my Semblance, you have to first understand that Kiritsugu was… a mythology enthusiast. The town I lived in, Fuyuki, was very isolated from most of Remnant, and because of that, we had a _huge _amount of… _local _heroes. There were plenty of legends of extraordinary people that I'm sure you would have only heard of if you were from the same place I was. Kiritsugu was particularly interested in those tales – sometimes, it even seemed that he'd met some of the figures depicted in our legends." It was a stretch, to be sure, but at least the last part was pretty true.

"One of the things held in common between each of these local heroes was that each of them possessed at least one weapon that was legendary in its own right. Basically, each hero would carry a weapon with them for so long that, when they were immortalized in legend, the weapon itself would gain its own legendary status, connected but separate from the Heroes themselves." Alright. He clearly had them hooked. Time for the big reveal. He was pleasantly surprised to find his own heart aflutter with the excitement of being able to reveal a secret that he had been told he would never be able to share.

"I had the dubious pleasure, once, of meeting a man who… well, let's say he specialized in creating replicas of the weapons used by those legendary heroes. The man himself was kind of an asshole, but the weapons he made… they were extraordinary." The three girls were all fully engrossed at this point, none more so than Ruby, whose eyes were already sparkling as she merely _imagined _the kind of weaponry he was talking about.

"They were beautiful, each and every one of them. It wasn't until after I met him that I finally unlocked my Semblance… it allows me to fully understand the weapons I saw, and to create temporary copies of them. When I was able to watch that man fight, which he did often in the last few days that Fuyuki stood, I could observe hundreds of them. It also just so happened that another combatant, at the end, was a… collector, I suppose, who happened to own most – if not all – of the original weapons those heroes had wielded. Between the two of them, the amount of weapons I was able to record within my rea- my Semblance – grew impossibly quickly."

He paused once more to gauge their reactions to his tale. Good, no incredulity yet, despite his near slip. Ruby seemed like she was hanging on his every word, desperate to see the weapons he spoke of. Pyrrha and Weiss were more reserved, but it was clear that at this point they were both fully engrossed as well. "So, my collection of weapons that I can create is made up mostly of replicas and fakes, although I've seen a fair amount of the originals as well. Many of the weapons of those heroes, however, were imbued with a more… _conceptual _weight, and that's what my Semblance truly makes use of."

He smiled. "If, in a legend, a hero's blade was said to inflict wounds that never healed – so too does my copy of it. If they were said to be especially effective against monsters, then by copying them I'm more effective against the Grimm. And if a legendary sword was reputed to be able to be able to destroy an entire fortress in a single blow… then I can do the same."

Ruby's mouth dropped open. Pyrrha stared with wide eyes. Weiss, however, narrowed hers. "If what you're saying is true… you must have one of the most powerful Semblances I've ever heard of."

"Well, first of all, the more powerful the effect of a weapon, the more Aura it takes to copy and use it," Shirou reassured her. "But it kind of is really, really good. After all, I can make copies of legendary, basically magical weapons – so naturally, it's easy for me to make copies of most mundane weapons as well. And from there, it's not that much harder to make copies of a lot of other things too. The true power is in the weapons, but there's a lot of versatility in being able to make anything else that I want to as well. Except Dust. I can't copy that. Well, maybe if it was Dust in the shape of a sword, but I haven't seen anything like that so far."

"So, you could make a copy of Crescent Rose?" Ruby asked, hand unconsciously drifting towards the small of her back as she spoke, despite her weapon being stored in her rocket locker.

"_Trace, On," _Shirou silently intoned. He flushed prana through his circuits and drew the copy of his leader's weapon from his Reality Marble, materializing it in a flash of blue light in its collapsed form. He tossed the compact copy over to Ruby.

She caught it deftly, eyes wide. She jumped off the bed and immediately deployed it to full size.

"Not in the room!" Weiss quickly interrupted her as she made to swing it. "Remember what happened to the curtains?"

"Heh, oh yeah, sorry. But, I mean, look at it! It feels so similar! I can't even tell the difference, and I'm the one who built her in the first place!" She settled for looking over every part of the weapon in intimate detail, rather than testing it out.

"Yeah, my copies are pretty much perfect," Shirou said, without any pride in his voice despite the words that could be considered boastful. "I'm pretty good at copying the fighting styles of the original users as well, but that only goes so far. For example, I could copy Ruby's style, but without being able to copy the bullets she uses and move at super-speeds, I'd be really limited in what I could do with it."

"So if someone like Ruby became legendary…" Pyrrha asked slowly, "then you would be able to create a copy of her weapon with special properties? That seems… wow."

Shirou nodded. "Like I said, it's pretty good. It would probably take a lot for her to be recognized as legendary enough, though. Most of the heroes I mentioned were from really old stories."

"But they actually existed? And you said someone in Fuyuki still had the original weapons used by them?" Weiss asked. "Your town must have had a very rich history, if you can copy _hundreds _of them." She seemed slightly skeptical, but there was no denying the very large scythe that Ruby was still cooing over.

"Would you like to see one of them?" he asked. Before she had tie to respond, Ruby had shot over to him in a burst of rose petals.

"Yes yes yes yes! Bring out the magic weapons!" She bounced happily up and down in front of him. He noticed that she'd instinctively sheathed the copy of Crescent Rose at her back, and he allowed it to dissipate with a laugh.

With the sudden lack of familiar weight behind her, she overbalanced on her next bounce, falling forward onto his bed. She regained her feet quickly enough, and continued bouncing, slightly more subdued and lightly blushing. Shirou smiled at her. "Any requests?"

"Um, I know it's not exactly a _common_ weapon, but… did any of the, uh, heroes, use a scythe?" she asked hopefully. "Not to say I'm unhappy with my baby!" she followed up immediately, hands raised defensively, protesting an accusation that nobody had made. "I just, kind of want to know how Crescent Rose might stack up to literally legendary weapons."

"Actually, yeah, there's at least one that I know of who used a scythe."

He was pleased to note Ruby's shock – like she'd really hoped that he would say yes, but that she'd expected that the answer was no, and had already been bracing herself for it.

"His name was Perseus. Legends say that he was cast into the sea as a baby, alongside his mother, but that miraculously he survived. When he was older, to protect his mother, he set out on an impossible task – to slay a monster whose gaze could allegedly turn people to stone." He recalled briefly that while studying the history of Remnant, he learned that the primary religion was ditheistic, which meant he could continue the story without needed to abridge it. "They say he was favored by the gods, and that when they saw the difficulty of the task, they took mercy and granted him five great treasures. One of them was his weapon."

With a pulse of prana, he Traced a copy of the weapon in question. In his outstretched hand slowly appeared a long, simple looking polearm. It had a shaft of dark grey metal, which was far lighter than it had any right to be, and the butt end was capped in more silvery steel. Beneath his hand, a portion of the shaft was wrapped tightly in a vibrant scarlet cloth. The head of the weapon was subdued – especially when compared to the blatancy of Crescent Rose. It was a simple U-shaped piece of metal, no more than a fifth of the size of Ruby's larger scythe. It tapered to a fine point and was sharpened on the inside edge.

"Its name is Harpē."

Was it irony that the monster Perseus had ultimately succeeded in slaying with this very weapon was Sakura's best friend?

The pleading in Ruby's eyes was honestly ridiculous. He would need to work on his willpower, he decided even as he handed the weapon over with a smile, or else he'd never be able to refuse her anything she wanted. "Be careful with it though, and I really mean it. This is one of the ones I mentioned that inflicts unhealable wounds – if you cut yourself, your Aura won't be able to fix it, you'd need to wait for it to heal naturally."

Everyone in the room looked on in concern as Ruby deftly spun and twirled it in a series of breakneck flourishes, completely disregarding his warnings. "Oh, it's so light! It feels like it _wants _to be used! Ooh, so pretty, yes you are! I know you wouldn't hurt big sister Ruby, now would you?" she gushed, apparently to the blade.

"Should we be worried?" Weiss asked drily, after the display, and the loving words, had gone on for more than a minute.

"Well, it certainly is a fine-looking weapon," Pyrrha answered. "I guess her… enthusiasm… makes some amount of sense."

Their team leader was now practically purring as she rubbed her face along the flat of the impossibly sharp cursed blade.

"Alright, I think that's enough of that," Shirou laughed, allowing his projection to fade into glittering blue lights, much to Ruby's disappointment. "Sorry, Ruby. It might not have any flashy effects, but that one is actually one of the more powerful weapons I have. If I let you cuddle with it all night, I won't have the energy left to show you any of the others."

Ruby's expression flipped instantly. She had been staring at the fading blue lights with the expression of someone who had just watched a friend die, but at his words, her face lit up once again. "More?!" she half asked, half proclaimed.

"Sure, why not? I'll show you the different weapons I've used so far since coming to Vale. At least, if… yeah, I suppose there's enough room in here."

Weiss raised an eyebrow warily. "And just what do you mean by that?"

Shirou laughed nervously as he rubbed the back of his head. "Well, let me tell you about a hero named Heracles…"

o-o-o-o-o

"Well, we didn't want to disturb you any further than we already had, but I could see Ruby wanted to continue, so I let her drag me outside. It was pretty late before I finally managed to satisfy her. I swear, it's like she's just an endless ball of energy who would play with my weapons forever, if I let her. Eventually, I couldn't help but give in to exhaustion, and I was forced to tell her that I couldn't go on any longer. Only the promise of some more later, and _soon_, was enough to finally sate her desires for one night."

Weird. Why did he suddenly feel such a huge wave of killing intent?

Shirou was explaining how the previous night had ended to Pyrrha and Weiss. Eventually, after some minor damages, and much to the relief of her teammates, Ruby had declared that their room wasn't a large enough area to fully test the different weapons Shirou projected for her. Despite being suitably impressed by his 'Semblance,' the other two had at that point had quite enough of their leader acting like a menace, so they'd stayed in the room to try and get some sleep as he was dragged out to a nearby courtyard.

He'd let her struggle to lift Berserker's stone axe-sword, he'd let her play around with Rider's nail-daggers (unfortunately before they left the room, and had done his best to repair the new holes in the wall afterwards,) he'd let her smack a tree around with Tora-Shinai, and had even shown her Caliburn, asking her to treat the blade with a little more reverence than the other ones. It was special, after all, having belonged to someone who was very close to him.

She'd practically worshipped the beautiful holy blade.

After that, he'd amused her by just projecting copies of the various weapons he'd seen in Remnant, both those from the shops and those held by their fellow classmates, giving her the opportunity to mess around with new and exciting weapons that would in any other circumstance probably be off limits to her.

"Still, even if she would have gone on longer if I'd been able to, I think she eventually went to sleep happy," he continued, whisking together the pancake mix that he knew several of the girls, especially Nora, were looking forward to.

Teams RESN and RVBY were hanging out in one corner of the school kitchens, which Shirou had apparently somehow appropriated for their use. Unbeknownst to the others, he'd had to bribe the school chefs with some of his cooking techniques, and, in fact, a fair distance away, some of the less senior members of the staff were taking notes as he prepared breakfast for the two teams.

It wasn't any great sacrifice on his part, after all, and he figured that if the other students ended up getting better food out of the bargain, it was a win-win.

"Aww, that's so nice of you!" Pyrrha told him with a wide smile. "I'm sorry, I would have gone with the two of you, but I was already exhausted from earlier. We – well, you and Ruby mostly – really did a number on the room once you started letting her mess around."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Shirou laughed. "I'll try not to let it happen again, but you know how she is."

"Hey! I'm right here, you know!" their team leader spoke up indignantly from slightly further down the kitchen island they were sitting around. She looked a little tired, but content. "And as your leader, I hereby publicly condemn you for letting me try to handle that massive sword!" She pointed a finger at him accusatorily. "I know I insisted it was a good idea at the time, but _you_ should have known better! Now I'm sore all over!" she complained.

Shirou only laughed in response, as Yang let out a strangled choking noise for some reason.

Ruby was right, but to be fair, she _had _insisted that she would be able to wield the axe-sword. He was pretty sure that even with Aura, without being able to draw strength from the weapon itself, such a task would be pretty close to impossible. She'd struggled for _minutes _to even _budge_ the heavy blade.

He easily poured some of the pancake mix into an already heated skillet, practiced hands creating a perfect circle. As it began to hiss, he turned to a mixing bowl and began to whisk the eggs within. "Hey, Yang, are you alright?" he asked. The blonde was currently hunched forward, clutching the granite countertop with both hands, and seemed unbelievably tense, her fingers practically making indents into the stone. "Your eyes seem a little red. Trouble sleeping in a dorm with new people? Can't say I blame you, I'm a little tired myself. Although, I had my own reasons for being up most of the night."

He shot a glare at Ruby, but it was paired with a smile, so she accepted it with a small laugh and blush, rather than as a serious condemnation. Pyrrha chuckled along with her, and even Weiss smiled.

"Thanks for taking her off our hands, Shirou," the white-haired heiress said. "After you got her riled up in the first place, I don't think any of us would have been able to sleep at _all_ if you hadn't taken her outside."

"Of course. It was my pleasure," he answered her, checking on the bacon happily sizzling away in another skillet.

There was a cracking sound as, somehow, Yang clenched the stone even tighter. No doubt trying to avoid falling asleep again by holding on tightly to something solid, Shirou reasoned. It must have been really difficult for her to adapt to the new sleeping conditions. Hmm, weird, her hair almost seemed like it was glowing.

In fact, most of team RVBY was acting a little weirdly, weren't they? Besides Yang, Blake was also looking much more… _red_ than he remembered her. Her face was completely flushed, and she was refusing to meet anyone on his team's eyes. She also seemed to be trying to edge away from her partner.

Maybe she was just hungry? He bent down to peer into the oven beneath his stovetop work station, checking on the currently baking salmon that Blake had seemed so excited to see as being a part of a breakfast. Yes, it was coming along nicely. He turned to a nearby bowl and stirred the homemade sauce that closely approximated teriyaki, the result of several hours of experimentation.

Ren, of all people, also looked to be slightly discomforted, which, for the normally taciturn boy was practically a neon billboard pointing at something being unusual. _Nora_ seemed the most normal of all four, which was something Shirou never would have predicted himself thinking, but then again, it seemed as though she had completely devoted her attention to the pancake batter and hadn't heard a single word spoken in the last few minutes.

Why was everyone acting so weird? He noted that Yang's red-tinted stare seemed to be directly focused at him. He shot her a disarming smile, intuiting the source of her discomfort. "Oh, don't worry, Yang. I'll take good care of your sister! There's no need to be worried on her account, if that's what's keeping you up." He turned his back on her and poured the eggs into yet another pan.

Weird, there was that wave of killing intent again. Oh well, breakfast was nearly ready, and he was surrounded by friends and allies, so it was probably fine. The rice-cooker was nearly finished, as well.

As he began to ready plates and dole out food, Yang forcefully tore her gaze away from the cook and affixed it to her younger sister. "Ruby. This… _man,_ he's… treating you right?" she barely managed to growl out.

"Yeah, of course! He's great! Why do you ask?" The younger girl answered cheerily.

Yang ignored the question, answering with one of her own, again with a gravelly voice. "And your teammates. They're just… _okay_ with this?"

"With what?" _Damn her innocent face,_ Yang thought to herself.

She forced herself to answer, despite how much it hurt to do so. "With you apparently _dragging_ Shirou off to play with his 'oversized sword,' after he tired _both of them _out!" She tried to keep her tone at least somewhat civil, but it still somehow came out as more of a snarl.

"Well, it was only polite of him to take responsibility for what he started in the first place," Weiss cut in. "None of us would have had _any _sleep if he hadn't." Pyrrha nodded, glancing at Shirou gratefully.

Yang fumed. How could they all talk like this so openly? What had Shirou _done _to her sister and the rest of his team, that they saw such things as acceptable conversation topics?!

"Yang, I don't know why you're so upset over this!" Ruby pleaded with her sister. "It was seriously amazing! I know you're not necessarily as interested in things like that as I am, but really, maybe one day he'll show you the things he showed me! I _promise_ you'd enjoy it – I can't even imagine someone _not _thinking it's the best Semblance ever!"

Yang choked on the water she'd been trying to drink to cool down a little. Now his _Semblance _was involved?! What kind of _deviant, _or _monster,_ was he, that his own _soul_ would express itself in such a way?

And since _when _was _Ruby _of all people 'more interested' in things like that than her?! And why would Ruby be alright with Shirou showing her the same things?! Surely her teammates were already enough?! Just what would it take to satisfy Shirou's sick desires?

"Breakfast is ready~!" Shirou called out, sliding out plates and bowls to each of the Huntsmen-in-training.

Nora, of course, received a _huge_ stack of pancakes, absolutely _drenched_ in syrup. She dug in immediately, an expression of bliss gracing her features.

Blake sat, bow twitching happily, in front of a large fillet of salmon glazed in the closest approximation to teriyaki sauce Shirou had managed to create, alongside a bowl of a simple miso-style soup, and another of white rice. She smiled at the chef gratefully.

Ren had a bowl of rice as well, but it was much thicker than Blake's. The porridge-like mix of rice combined with pieces of fish as well as some leafy herbal greens, flavored to the cook's whims, was met with wide eyes. Ren nodded to Shirou as he dug into the congee, pleasantly surprised to see such a relatively obscure recipe served.

Ruby had also been slid a plate of pancakes, though it differed from Nora's. Rather than the thick purple syrup that the orange-haired girl seemed so fond of, Ruby's pancakes were instead covered in fresh slices strawberries and copious amounts of whipped cream. She gasped as the plate came to a halt in front of her, and for a moment she was stunned by the beautiful presentation of the food, but her instincts quickly took over, and she set to with fork and knife.

Pyrrha had a more traditional breakfast, not too dissimilar to what she would have normally grabbed from the cafeteria. Bacon and scrambled eggs, with a side of toast. Still, when she bit down into the first forkful of her food, her eyes shot open wide. She chewed in shock. How could such simple fare contain such flavor?

Weiss' plate was perhaps the most reserved. A tasteful arrangement of sliced fruit, topped with a small dollop of fresh whipped cream, served alongside a mug of piping hot tea. She raised an eyebrow in appreciation as she took her first bite. Truly, the flavor profiles of the different fruits complemented each other perfectly, especially when combined with the cream. And if the fruit had been powdered with _just _the right amount of sugar, as well – well, though her family might disapprove, _she_ certainly wasn't going to complain.

And then there was Yang's meal, which mirrored the spread on Shirou's own plate. A well-balanced combination of omelette, containing a variety of vegetables, cheeses, and meats, served with a side of fruit. She noticed, however, that her own plate also came with a unique side of fried potatoes, while Shirou had opted for a small bowl of rice instead.

She tried her best to frown at the man who had stolen her sister's innocence as she took her first forceful bite – but _damn_ if he wasn't a good cook. She stared down at her plate of food in shock, completely disarmed of her previous malice.

Sure, yesterday she had joked with her sister about Shirou being husband material, when he mentioned he knew how to cook – but how could she have been expected to anticipate something like _this?_

It was unreal. Had she _ever_ tasted an egg this good before? What the hell?! How had he done it? Was this the mysterious Semblance Ruby had mentioned, somehow able to bring intense pleasure to others?

She cautiously took another bite, alert for any kind of supernatural interference.

Nope. The food really was _just_ _that_ _good_.

Alright. She might have to revise her original – or, she supposed, her secondary – judgment a little. Perhaps he _was, _in fact, husband material. If he made her little sister this happy, and _also _happened to provide _her _with meals of this quality as a matter of course, was it really her job to stand in the way of that?

A moment later, she forcefully shook her head. Of course it was! There was no way on Remnant that she was just going to sit there idly and _accept _the fact that this man had shown Ruby his massive sword and let her play with it all night! Even if he _was _able to create what was possibly the _best_ _breakfast_ she'd ever had, a breakfast that was even now making several of her friends – _and Ruby! – _moan in pleasure!

And – oh, gods, she was doing it too, wasn't she? She looked up from her plate to see that _bastard's _self-satisfied grin, as he took in her enjoyment of his food – as well as that of all the others he'd invited to breakfast.

Nobody had even thanked him, so engrossed were they in their own meals. Though, she supposed, that was practically a form of thanks in and of itself.

"Shirou…" Pyrrha was the first to be able to meet the man's eyes. Her own emerald gaze met his with an aspect of adoration clearly visible – or was it _worship?_ Yang wasn't sure, and she wasn't about to risk the integrity of her own faith by looking directly at him. "Is there anything I can offer you to convince you to cook meals for us in the future?" the champion continued.

Surprising everyone, Weiss was quick to add to her teammates request. "I've been provided… a _sizable _allowance, by my father, to ensure that I be met with amenities of a sufficient quality for one of my station. I would be _more _than justified in allocating that stipend to you, if this quality of meal were to be made readily available."

"I'd do anything for more of this," Ruby added, her mouth stuffed with pancake and whipped cream.

Yang was slightly disgusted with herself for _completely_ agreeing with her sister's sentiments. She noticed that Ren, Nora, and Blake were all staring hopefully at Shirou as well.

"Don't worry about it," Shirou answered the collective plea gracefully, with an easy smile. "I enjoy making food for people to enjoy. I'm glad to see you all like it. Of course I'll be happy to provide more in the future; no payment is necessary."

Gods _damn_ him! How the hell was she supposed to be protective over Ruby, like any good older sister should, when he was so clearly the perfect man?

Okay, sure, he was kind of short. But _apparently_ that wasn't a proportional issue – and _why the hell_ was she trying to justify her own little sister's sexual shenanigans with a guy on their _second night_ of rooming together? What was _wrong _with her?!

She stared down at what was left of the food on her plate in horror. First of all, where had it all gone? Had she truly already eaten so much of it, without even noticing? Secondly, was this the true power of high-quality cooking? Was it enough to blind her to the injustices taking place against her own sister?

And was it worth it? She couldn't help but ask herself as her arm unconsciously shoveled the last bit of delicious food into her mouth.

Was it truly protectiveness that urged her to pull her sister away from the man who was capable of creating such miracles of food, or was it… jealousy?

If, instead, she _encouraged_ such a relationship to flourish… would she be fed like this regularly? Could Ruby really do any better? Was it, in fact, her _duty _to ensure that her sister ended up with a man that was able to provide for her the same way that Shirou apparently could?

Yang's eyes were wide as they rested unflinchingly on the empty plate in front of her.

Oblivious to her internal turmoil, Shirou collected it and began to wash it in the nearby sink.

Oh well, he thought. She was probably just tired.

o-o-o-o-o

Jaune Arc staggered through the streets of Vale.

His thoughts were in turmoil. Part of that, of course, was the fact that this 'morning,' he'd embarked upon a task that most would have considered impossible – and against all odds, he'd come back alive.

The other part of it was probably the blood loss.

He was really glad that the uniform for Junior's Club was black and crimson. The colors really helped disguise the bloodstains. Otherwise, people might have had something to say about the grievously wounded man limping through their midst.

They probably just assumed he was drunk.

Far from it, however! He, Jaune Arc, an _untrained _civilian, had _slain _a Beowolf!

If he was drunk on anything, it was on victory!

To be fair, he hadn't come out of the encounter unscathed. First of all, it was probably only the fact that he was so cocksure after his dream that had stopped him from being ambushed by a full pack of Grimm.

Rather, so assured was he of his own destiny to become a Huntsman, completely devoid of all negative thoughts, he was actually able to sneak up on a Grimm himself!

It had been a single Beowolf. Perhaps the weakest of all Grimm, save maybe for Creeps. Still, it was one of those creatures that Huntsmen so regularly fought. In packs, they could be terrifying, but alone, they were considered weak.

None of that analysis had passed through his brain when he first saw the monster. All that he could see was a _different _monster, one composed fully of purplish slime…

"_Go show those Grimm who's boss!"_

And that was _exactly _what he was going to do.

He had charged forward with a scream, somehow _surprising _the beast that was supposed to be made of mindless evil.

He had fought like a berserker. His arms had flailed wildly, one hand frantically slapping away counterattacks, and the other slashing wildly with a certain knife. This strategy had not faltered in the slightest no matter whether he was stood on his feet, pinned flat on his back, or straddling the already decomposing body of the Beowolf.

He had continued to slash and stab _long_ after the beast was already dead.

_He had won._

It hadn't been easy. Even with the element of surprise, he had nearly been overpowered several times. His abdomen had been slashed open, both arms were dripping blood from deep scratches, and he heavily limped along on the one leg that _hadn't_ been nearly hamstrung.

Still, his wild flailing had worked! The advice of the monster from his dreams had _worked!_ He had _killed a Grimm!_

What was pain, in the face of such a victory? Who cared if he'd been mere centimeters from being disemboweled, if he – normal, ordinary Jaune Arc – had managed to _slay _one of the _creatures of Grimm?_

The pain, in fact, barely registered to him. He'd managed to shuffle back to his apartment after his encounter in the forest, bleeding heavily, and pull on his work uniform, all with a brilliant smile on his face.

It was in that state that he finally pushed open the doors to Junior's Club and shuffled over to the position he would be expected to hold for the duration of his shift.

If his suit happened to be a little more wet than normal, black fabric stained slightly darker than usual, nobody though to mention it.

Except, perhaps, the Malachite sisters.

"Hey, Newbie. You know you're gonna get fired if you show up to work wasted," Miltia Malachite mocked the blonde henchman that stood near the bar. He was swaying back and forth, clearly barely able to keep to his feet.

"Bwuh?" was the man's eloquent response, accompanied by a frankly _stupidly _happy smile.

Melanie frowned on her sister's behalf. "Hey, fuckface, she's serious! You think Junior's just going to calmly accept someone coming to work drunk? You'd better find a way to sober up quick, or your days working here are going to be over _quick."_

The blonde man smiled at her. Her frown deepened. What was wrong with him?

He slumped like a puppet with his strings cut, falling forwards onto his face.

"What the hell?!" Miltia jumped back from him, startled despite her training.

"Relax. Probably just some kind of drug. You know how the fresh recruits are," Melanie laughed lightly, stepping forward bravely and grabbing the prone man by one arm. "I'll just drag him outside before any customers get here. He can sober up in an alley and _then_ regret taking drugs before his shift at the Club."

She began to make good on her word.

"Uhh, Melanie?" Miltia cautiously ventured.

Her twin stopped in her journey and looked back at her. "What?"

"Are druggies supposed to leave red stains on the floor?"

Melanie looked down at the trail that she'd dragged the man along, and quickly paled. The tiles of the dance floor were heavily stained with what could be nothing other than blood. "Uh, Junior!" she yelled, slightly panicked. "We've got a problem!"

The man, to his credit, quickly abandoned his bar and ran to the aid of his subordinate. "What? What's wrong—oh."

He looked down as he approached the scene, following the trail of blood to the unconscious employee that was still held in Melanie's grip.

Junior's expression darkened. "Gods _damn _it. If other gangs think they can get a foot up over us by attacking the rank and file, they're in for a rude awakening. Melanie." He turned to his bodyguard.

"Y-yeah?" She asked, still staring, somewhat shocked, at the bleeding body in her grip.

"Activate his Aura. We're _not_ letting one of our men die after being attacked like this. And after he recovers, and can answer questions, be prepared to take the fight to our rivals."

The woman in the white dress nodded, only slightly shakily, and knelt to the ground beside the body of the wounded henchman.

"For it is in notoriety that we achieve immortality…"

**Hey, I'll probably switch to shorter chapters from now on – I feel like 6000 words is probably enough to satisfy most people, and is a lot easier to fit into a busy schedule that includes writing other more mandatory stuff as well! If people greatly disagree with that decision, either leave a review or shoot me a message, and if it becomes clear that people expect longer chapters, I'll do my best to satisfy, though it'll obviously take longer to write them. **

**Here's a more light-hearted chapter, anyways. Enjoy some wholesome team-building and innuendoes after the harsh punishment of Cardin last chapter. **

**Thanks to everyone for the reviews. As a fairly new author, I really appreciate each and every one of them. All of your input and encouragement is a large part of what encourages people like me to keep creating new content. Please continue to read and review!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Interlude Chapter**

Jaune opened his eyes. He felt… really good. _Great,_ actually.

Which was pretty weird, actually, considering he remembered being pretty beat up after he had _killed a Beowolf._ He fought the urge to cheer for himself again as he sat up and took a look around, but he couldn't stop himself from at least smiling widely.

Huh. This wasn't his room. He was resting on a cot in what appeared to be a tastefully decorated office, painted in dark shades with splashes of red. He'd been bandaged, apparently, but the wounds below them felt nowhere near as painful as he thought they ought to.

Not that he really cared either way. I mean, yeah, they kind of hurt, but he'd _killed a Grimm._

There was a desk in the room as well. It looked nice, very solid, quality wood. Behind it was sat a woman in a white dress. She looked nice, very pretty, quality features.

She pulled her scroll to her ear with a bored expression. "Hey, Junior? Yeah, he's awake. And he's smiling all weird again. You might want to get in here."

Had Jaune mentioned recently to himself that he'd _fought and beat a Grimm?_ Oh yeah, he had. That didn't make it any less satisfying to think, though, so he indulged and did so once more.

o-o-o-o-o

Hei 'Junior' Xiong frowned. "Kid, you expect me to believe that you fought a Grimm with no Aura, and didn't end up as a fine mist?"

"I'm telling the truth! But, uh, with no what now?"

He pressed a palm against his forehead and sighed. "Aura. You know, the manifestation of our souls that negates the damage from attacks, amplifies us physically, and allows us to actualize our Semblances?"

The blonde stared at him blankly.

He tried again. "The magic force field that protects Huntsmen?"

"_What?! _They have those?!" Jaune exploded in shock.

Junior repressed the urge to growl and settled for another sigh instead. "Yes. Jaune. They have those. And Aura is considered to be pretty damn mandatory when it comes to taking on the Grimm. I haven't heard a report of someone managing to kill one without it in years. There must be no more than a dozen such cases… _ever."_

For some reason, that just made the idiot's smile wider. "So, you're saying I'm special?" he asked his boss.

"I'm saying I don't _believe _you. Seriously, Jaune, if you were threatened into silence or something like that, don't worry about it. Nobody hurts one of ours and gets away with it – plus, we unlocked your Aura. We're not going to let you get hurt again. Just give us the names of the bastards who did this!"

"Don't my wounds look like they came from a Grimm, though?"

Junior paused and looked to Melanie, who shrugged, before turning back to his employee. "Listen, kid. Kill someone and blame it on the Grimm is, like, the oldest trick in the book. It typically doesn't work, especially when the victim is in the _middle of the city._"

"But I told you! I went out in the forest before my shift!"

"Oh yeah? Then where's your sword? You showed up to work without it. You wouldn't have just left it in the forest, would you?"

Jaune blinked. "My sword?"

Junior rolled his eyes. "Yes, Jaune, your sword. You know, the big chunk of steel you waved around during your interview? The one you claimed was a famous relic, and a piece of history, and a way for me to cut costs on giving you a machete, until I finally took pity on you and hired you?"

"Oh, that sword. I didn't even bring it to the forest, I had this instead!" He reached down past his bloodstained pants, which for Miltia and Melanie's sake had remained on even as he was bandaged, and drew a knife from his boot.

It was an ordinary looking kitchen knife. Cheap looking thing, too.

Junior frowned. "Okay, now you're just taking the piss."

"Swear on my life, boss!"

Junior growled, but before he could snap, Melanie cut in. "Hey, Junior, isn't this a good thing?"

He turned to look at her and raised an eyebrow, which made the girl laugh. "I mean, I know you're upset over having one of your men get all cut up, but it's definitely better if that _doesn't_ mean an impending gang war, right? Besides, you can always use more employees with unlocked Auras. Especially since some of our best boys got beat up when Roman hired them out."

Junior stopped to consider. "That's only if he's telling the truth, though," he partially conceded. He turned back to Jaune. "Listen, kid, if you want to keep your secrets, then keep them. But I need to know, right now, whether whatever you're getting up to in your spare time is going to hurt me or mine."

"N-no, it won't." It seemed Jaune had received the message. For the first time, his smile had slipped, and he responded with a sincerity befitting the gravitas of the question. "I promise, boss."

Junior snorted. "Good. It had better not. And, just on the off chance that you _did _run afoul of a Grimm… you'll want to watch out from now on."

Jaune lifted an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

Melanie fielded the answer. "There's a reason why only around five or ten percent of people have their Auras unlocked, kid. If it was _just _a magic force field, why wouldn't we just unlock everybody's?"

"Because… criminals might use it to do bad things?" Jaune hazarded a guess at answering the facetious question.

"Jaune." Junior said flatly. "_We're_ criminals. Does it seem like we had a hard time having our Auras unlocked?"

"Uhh… alright then, I got nothing."

"It's because without training, Aura isn't worth much," Melanie continued. "A little bit of extra strength, speed, and durability isn't going to help you if you have absolutely no skill to back it up. And even beyond that, it's because Aura comes with a downside as well."

"You're wearing your soul like it's a piece of clothing now," Junior added. "What do you think that does to your emotions?"

"Um…"

Melanie sighed. "It amplifies them, idiot. Or at least, it makes them more visible, more real. No matter how hard you try to hide them, you'll just naturally be more expressive for the rest of your life. And please, tell me you at least know how Grimm find humans to prey upon."

Jaune nodded. "Ah, I think I get it. Negative emotions, right?"

"Got it in one. There's an old saying – one despairing Huntsman is more attractive to the Grimm than a hundred despairing civilians."

"So if everybody had their Aura unlocked, but didn't have the skill to do anything with it…" Jaune began.

"They would still react to any crisis like completely normal untrained civilians, and the flare of negative energy they sent out would be at least a hundred times greater than normal. Basically, even if each civilian could take a couple more hits from a Beowolf without dying, if a hundred times as many Grimm show up to the party, Humanity's still going to come out net negative in terms of lives lost."

"That's also a big part of why Huntsmen typically operate in such small teams," Junior added. "And why big gatherings, take the Vytal festival for example, typically have so much security – you might think that having so many Huntsmen gathered in one place would make it one of the safest places to be, but the other side of that same coin means that it's a much more attractive target for the Grimm. You also might have noticed how far away Beacon is from the city of Vale proper – it would be irresponsible to have so many Huntsmen, especially trainee ones, living any closer to Vale's civilians, and you might have noticed how the school is built directly next to a forest that's constantly filled with Grimm, no matter how many the students kill."

"Ah. That makes a lot of sense. But what if I don't have any negative emotions?" Jaune asked earnestly.

Junior couldn't help but laugh. "You got balls, kid, but _nobody's_ that calm. Again, I'm not sure I believe you yet, but if you _did _just come back from killing a Grimm, then it messed you up really bad. Your unlocked Aura will heal you, this time at least, but you're not trained and there's no way you won't instinctively react in fear the next time you see one, especially if the memories of your wounds are fresh. Then, you'll just draw down the pack, and it'll all be over. If anything, it would be even more dangerous to fight a Grimm now than it was yesterday, because there will just be more of them next time."

"But I'm not afraid." The blonde's tone was simple, earnest, and – surprisingly – Junior couldn't detect any sign of falsehood. Not even the misplaced bravado he would have expected from a boy Jaune's age.

"What do you mean you're not afraid? You almost died," Melanie accused. "Would have, if not for us."

"Yeah, and there's really no way I can thank you enough for what you've done for me, but, I mean… I beat a Grimm, on my own, without even apparently having the force field I was supposed to have. Now that I do, how could I be afraid something that's weaker, relatively, than it used to be?"

"Kid, if even after what you went through, you're still not afraid of whatever messed you up… you're either the bravest or the stupidest son-of-a-bitch I've ever met. That or there's something _seriously _wrong with your brain," Junior harshly condemned Jaune.

The blonde boy didn't seem to hear how negative the declaration was. "So, you _are_ saying I'm special!"

Junior sighed. It was looking more and more like it might be the brain issue.

o-o-o-o-o

Yang glared at her opponent. The other girl stood at the other end of the stage.

"Don't think I'll go easy on you," Pyrrha said coldly. "We both know that this fight is for who gets to partner with Shirou."

As Pyrrha's teammate had thus far distinguished himself as being at the top of the class with his utter defeat of Cardin, there was something of a rumor going around that whoever proved themselves equally capable would end up as his partner for the week.

For most students, that had meant fear and reluctance. After what had happened to Cardin, not many were thrilled at the thought of being stuck with Shirou for a full week.

Pyrrha and Yang were the exceptions to that rule.

"I'm going to be his sparring partner," Yang growled, "and then I am going to spend all of next week _breaking_ him."

"I can't let you do that, Yang," Pyrrha replied. "As his _actual_ partner, it's naturally my duty to be his sparring partner as well," she said with a slight blush. "O-oh, and, of course, I can't let you break my teammate."

"You let me think he'd _done things _to Ruby!" Yang roared.

"It's your fault for misunderstanding!"

"It's _your_ fault for being so damn suggestive!"

"Why are you even so mad? Nothing actually happened!"

"So instead of killing him for what he might have done to Ruby, I'll kill him for making a fool of me! Even _Blake _called me a pervert!"

Even Pyrrha seemed taken aback by that. "Wow. Really?"

Yang nodded. "I know, right?"

"Hey!" Blake shouted from her seat with a scowl, arms crossed. The rest of the class watched the heated exchange with interest. The two girls on stage were undoubtedly some of the strongest in their class.

Ruby slouched next to Shirou, her face beet red, as her name was dragged into their conflict. It had been several days since the fateful breakfast that had apparently caused this confrontation, and it was only the previous night that Yang had finally realized that all interactions between Ruby and Shirou had been innocent. It was also the last day of the preliminary rounds that Glynda would use to pair them off.

Shirou himself seemed calm – rather _too _calm, really, as he weathered not only Yang's verbal abuse, but also the stares of their classmates who were intrigued by the accusations being thrown around.

"Wow, Yang seems pretty fired up," he said, in what might have been the understatement of the century. "I wonder why. Nobody ever explained to me what she thought I'd done."

"Lucky," Ruby mumbled. "She was lecturing me for what felt like _hours _last night. I had to hear _in detail _all the things she thought you—_we'd _done."

She somehow managed, as she often did, to flush an even brighter color than she had before. "When she figured out it was all a misunderstanding, she told me I needed to 'take responsibility' for messing with her emotions, whatever that means."

She tactfully did _not _mention to Shirou that at first, before the whole thing was cleared up, Yang had been demanding that _Shirou _take responsibility for what he'd allegedly done to _her_, which somehow involved a marriage proposal, not to mention a sizable bride-price to be paid to the family of the bride – payable over time, and in regular installations of food.

Worse still was that Yang hadn't _completely _dropped the idea even after being disillusioned.

"Ladies! That is quite enough." Glynda cut between the still ongoing trash-talk like a knife. "Please, for the sake of everyone else, keep your drama private. A true Huntress does not waste time bantering with the Grimm! Now fight!"

Yang threw her fists out to her sides with a roar, chambering rounds into Ember Celica. Her eyes flashed red, and her hair began to glow with golden fire.

Pyrrha raised an eyebrow reservedly, but she was in reality kind of surprised. From what she'd seen and heard thus far, Yang's Semblance required her to take a certain amount of damage before the blonde could activate it and reflect the force she'd taken.

Had she punched herself before the fight began, just to get an edge over the champion fighter she faced? Or was she simply _so mad_ that she was able to break through the boundaries of her own Semblance?

Really, either explanation sounded pretty viable right about now, as the golden-haired human comet rushed towards her.

What followed was swift and brutal.

Yang fought with reckless abandon, and a ferocity that had as of yet been unseen in Glynda's classroom. It was as if she was fighting for her very survival, bringing out every dirty trick she knew. With each hit she took, she grew yet more wild, more feral.

It couldn't have been further from Pyrrha's style, who fought as befitted a tournament champion. Each movement flowed smoothly into the next with no hesitation. Even if Shirou _did_ notice that perhaps she included a little too much flair into her form, perfect for awing a crowd, he couldn't say that it detracted from the skill she displayed. Even if there were ways to make it _more_ efficient, more suited for a battle of life and death, it was certainly already at a level of skill that was more than enough to match the berserker she fought. She also was clearly more determined and focused than he'd ever seen her before during a sparring match.

Yang fought like a force of nature, a wildfire of blurred fists and explosions, seemingly unstoppable. Pyrrha fought like an artist, each thoughtful stroke of the brush that was her sword coming together to form a complete image that was, in a word, beautiful.

They exchanged blows for a couple of minutes – and then, without warning, it was suddenly over. Yang flew forward in a shotgun-fist propelled leap, steering and accelerating herself with auxiliary shots. A last-second course correction jerked her just under and past a sweeping roundhouse kick, and she sprung out of the ensuing slide in an uppercut that would have taken an ordinary opponent's head off.

Pyrrha was not an ordinary opponent. She continued to pivot in the direction of her kick without pause, already beginning to lean back smoothly before she had even missed. Yang's uppercut rocketed past her face with millimeters to spare, but the champion didn't even blink. As her foot touched the ground once more, she planted it and kept spinning, dropping her center of gravity and extending her other leg.

The Aura-assisted reverse sweep connected just as Yang came down from her leap, timed perfectly to catch the blonde's feet _just_ before they made contact with the stage once more, and thus denying the brawler any purchase to resist the blow.

A slight upwards impulse on Pyrrha's part, combined with the superhuman speed of the attack, flipped Yang around to a perfect horizontal, while the sudden torque imparted slammed her upper body heavily down onto the unyielding stage.

Pyrrha had never ceased her one fluid movement, surging forward in a crouch even as she came out of her sweep and flipping her sword around into a reverse grip. By the time Yang landed, and before the other girl had a chance to recover, Pyrrha had stepped into her space and rested the edge of Miló to her throat. The entire exchange took less than a second.

The room was silent for a brief instant, and then erupted into cheers. Yang glanced up at the hovering screen above them and saw that her Aura level had dropped just slightly beneath fifteen percent. Pyrrha herself was hovering around fifty or sixty.

Professor Goodwitch stepped forward with one of the most genuine smiles she had ever seen on the usually stern older woman. "And that's the match! Truly excellent showing, both of you!"

She began to critique their battle, raising her voice so as to let it carry to the whole class. "Miss Nikos. Truly, your ability to plan out the flow of battle is top notch, whether it be chaining your own movements together to take advantage of how you know an opponent will react or be moved, or by turning attacks against you into momentum propelling you into another series of moves to regain the initiative. If I were to offer one critique, however, you lack… intent. Your skill sets you apart, but you must not grow complacent in your ability. There is, as they say, always a bigger fish. This has, thus far, been the closest I have seen to you fully treating a battle with the respect that it deserves, but I know that you can do better. Still, it is an improvement I am glad to see."

She turned to Yang, who was pulling herself to her feet and dusting herself off with a frown. "Miss Xiao-Long. You deserve to be commended for, if nothing else, causing Miss Nikos to take a fight seriously." She paused momentarily to allow the laughter of the class – and Pyrrha's blush – to die down. "In all seriousness, however, your attitude is exactly what I want to see out of my students. Anger, but directed anger. Ferocity, but controlled ferocity. Our true enemy is merciless, dishonorable, and dangerous, and we must be all of these things in turn if we wish to face them. If only it were possible for every match to be as intense as this one. Take notes, students."

She smiled again. Strange, if she didn't know better, Yang might have actually thought that Glynda was _smirking._ "This is the first matchup for either of you that I have seen truly embody the ideals of being a Huntress. Miss Nikos, clearly Miss Xiao-long is the key to you developing a more practical style removed from what may have dominated the tournament circuit. Miss Xiao-long, not only are you potentially the only student here who can keep up with Miss Nikos, but she also clearly inspires something in you that will help tone down the frivolous attitude you have shown to many other spars and force you to treat combat seriously as well. As such, the two of you will be sparring partners for the next week."

"_What?!" _Yang yelled. But she needed to kill Shirou! It was a moment later that she realized Pyrrha had screamed the exact same thing.

"Which, I believe, leaves only a few students left unmatched. Hmm… Mister Lie, Miss Belladonna. The two of you fight with similar styles, favoring speed and precision over brute strength. You will be partners for the week – do your best to learn from each other how to best refine your own styles. Miss Valkyrie, Miss Rose, as wielders of heavy, momentum-based weaponry, the same goes to you. And finally… Mister Emiya and Miss Schnee. Your Semblances seem to be incredibly versatile, but with options comes complexity. Please challenge each other to constantly adapt and improve."

Weiss smiled demurely at Shirou, but it quickly wilted – as she realized she was suffering the glares of both Yang and Pyrrha. And Ruby, apparently. She sighed.

It was going to be a long week.

o-o-o-o-o

He took a really nice, long drag from his crumpled cigarette.

Finally, he'd done it. Survived that farce of a game, all the way to the end. It certainly hadn't been easy, and he wasn't even sure it would have been possible without the help of some prophetic dreams and the appearance of some sort of giant purple slug monster that convinced him to actually pay attention to said dreams.

It had been a weird week. It had started when he'd barely managed to avoid, through sheer luck, being crushed by a huge steel girder that apparently just fell from the sky, and it had just gotten deadlier from there.

He'd barely escaped the wreckage of his drag racer, after realizing that those cars couldn't actually turn.

He'd managed to tame the lion sent after him – he had always had something of a way with animals, after all, after that first incident with the guard dog centuries ago.

He'd deflected a lightning bolt, redirected a Pegasus (and incidentally taken out a pretty bad guy in the process), and managed to hide from a berserk demigod that was out for his blood (and thought he was a dog).

He'd even dodged the more mundane deaths – he avoided one car crash by simply going out to a café, and another by diving to rescue a little kid that he would have otherwise taken the hit for if he didn't know what was coming.

Finally, there had been one last death to avoid. The climax of this foolish war, reduced to nothing but a game show.

_Illyasviel von Einzbern, hostess of the Fifth Great Clash of the Magicians: The Holy Grail War – Extended Special, drew the stick from the yellow box in front of her. _

"Blackbeard!" _she declared to the audience._

_Pop-up-Pirate. A luck-based game, with players inserting swords into a barrel until "Blackbeard" within was sent flying upwards, indicating the loss of the player who had put in the final sword. _

_He understood all that. It was a simple game, and it made sense. He just had one question._

_Why the hell was HE in the barrel? _

He shuddered as he remembered that particular ordeal. He'd contorted his body in ways that it was never meant to be twisted inside his barrel-prison, barely dodging the blows of Saber and Archer. It was almost like they _wanted_ to stab him, even though that wasn't how the game worked at all!

Of course, even his **A** ranked agility wasn't enough to continue dodging after Gilgamesh himself decided to join in the fun.

"_I am the rules!"_

He shuddered again.

What a monster. The only reason he survived that encounter was because of his Protection from Arrows skill, which – in addition to his foreknowledge of how to avoid bashing his head through one of the ceiling lights – allowed him to escape, wounded, but alive.

And then, his weird, deadly week got even weirder.

That red-headed kid… in the destroyed ruins of what _used_ to be a city called Fuyuki, when presented with the golden chalice they'd all been fighting so hard for… he projected a sword, and cleaved the Grail in twain, releasing the corrupted horror that lay waiting within.

A cat?

No, that would just be _silly_. Of _course_ it wasn't just a tiny, anthropomorphic cat.

It was a giant_ horde _of tiny cat-women, in white turtlenecks and mauve skirts, which rapidly swept up the boy with a cacophonous screech and carried him towards the remains of the Holy Grail.

Which had – _obviously_ – transformed into a spaceship with the words "Super Flying Holy Grail Rocket" painted on the side when he had been distracted by the cat-women. Why would it have done anything else?

Through sheer force of will, aided in part by the Battle Continuation skill, he had pulled himself up from the pile of rubble against which he lay – and then he _ran._

o-o-o-o-o

Grail-kun watched the Irish hero's desperate sprint from the last remaining shred of studio seating, beside the White Princess of the True Ancestors, who was eating chips.

"That's it. You really get it, Lancer-kun. Your one-way ticket to a story where you can avoid death!" It let out a cheery giggle that would have sounded natural coming from a child, but only managed to come off as sinister as the sound somehow escaped its gaping maw.

o-o-o-o-o

Lancer barely made it. One Master and one Servant had made it to the Grail, as was intended. The last thing he heard before slipping into the sweet embrace of oblivion was that kid…

"_Kiritsugu... Have I become a hero?"_

Heh. What an idiot.

After an indeterminate amount of time, most of which he spent passed out from his wounds, he had woken up to a ship that was finally still and quiet.

And upside down.

There may have been a crash landing at one point, but according to his dreams he wasn't destined to die in it, so he decided to let that small detail slide.

"Finally… a land where I can live in peace. I've bested my destiny of death," he couldn't help but mutter to himself. It almost didn't seem real, the fact that he was still alive after having had so many close calls.

He inhaled once more, breathing in the last of the calming smoke from his cigarette. He wanted to sleep again. He _really _wanted to sleep again.

There was just something niggling at the back of his mind that prevented him from doing so. He hadn't become a Hero by ignoring his instincts, so he tended to listen to such unidentifiable worries.

He racked his weary brain for answers, but he couldn't come up with any.

He sighed, ignoring his body's desires, and stood. He plodded panther-like through the interior of the rocket, past the still unconscious body of the boy who had been his ticket here, and pulled open the upside-down door that led to the outside world. A blast of fresh air swept through the ship, and behind him he heard the boy starting to stir, so he stepped outside and fell the meter or two to the soft ground they'd apparently crashed on.

They were in a forest. Everything was green. He inhaled deeply, allowing the fresh air to revitalize him, and took in the various scents of the land around him like the hound that was his namesake.

Lots of vegetation. Not a whole lot of animals. Nothing that set off his instincts as a hunter or promised an easy meal, anyways. And was that…? Yes, there was a slight hint of salt to the air that would only be there if there was a coast within a few miles. Well, where there was water, there were fish.

He spared one last glance at the rocket, shrugged dismissively, and began to walk off in the direction his nose told him would lead him to the sea. The kid could probably take care of himself, and with his own history of bad luck and close calls, it would probably be safer for both of them if he completely abandoned every remnant of his life during the Fuyuki Grail War.

He wondered if they had any cute girls here?

o-o-o-o-o

**Sorry everybody, I know it's a short chapter this time. I'm just setting some things up for the next one, which will probably be some slice-of-life stuff before we get back into the canon timeline. It was either push this mostly non-main-character chapter out now or make you guys wait a pretty long time for a longer one. I've decided to label chapters that have little to no focus on Shirou as Interlude chapters, but I do recommend that you read them anyways ****– they're important to the plot, I promise!  
**

**This chapter also serves to answer a question a few people have been asking about - Lancer, who according to Carnival Phantasm canon managed to sneak on board the rocket with Shirou, will be one of the only other Fate characters featured in this story, at least for a very long time. I have no immediate plans to add the rest of the Fate cast to Remnant, I feel like it would really jam things up and make for a less interesting story.**

****Thanks for reading, and I appreciate all the reviews!****


	6. Chapter 6

"So… is there anything in particular you want to work on?" Shirou asked.

He and Weiss stood on a small, private stage in the Combat classroom. Apparently, the room was fairly modular, and for the majority of the week, the amphitheater-like seats would be retracted to clear up more floor space.

Around them were other small stages, each surrounded by some sort of clear protective barrier that would prevent stray attacks from interfering with their classmates, and each containing another pair of students. Some were already fighting fiercely, including Yang and Pyrrha, but others had opted, like Shirou, to talk things out first.

Above them all, on the sole remaining seat in the room, sat Professor Goodwitch, staring down at her students critically. Her instructions for the class had been rather vague: "Train and improve."

"Well, I do already consider myself to be more than competently trained in both swordplay and Dust usage. I would assume based on your Semblance that you would prefer to work more on your swordsmanship?" Weiss answered with a haughty smirk.

They were both wearing their combat gear, of course. Shirou scanned his partner's outfit a bit more critically than he had when he first saw it.

Well, it was certainly… stylish, and expensive looking. It complemented her pale complexion and hair, especially the vibrant splash of crimson at her breast, and did a fine job of showing off her shapely, toned legs.

Yep, that was just about everything nice he could say about it as far as combat gear went. It was far too voluminous, for one. Weiss and his team leader had that in common — their frilly combat skirts may have provided freedom of movement, but it would be far too easy for even a deflected blow to snag them and pull them off balance. Beyond that, there was no armor of any kind to speak of, and it even lacked the semi-tactical belt that Ruby made use of. And to top it all off, she was wearing high heels — and not even bladed or spiked combat heels, which he thought would have made them at least marginally worthwhile.

He shook his head wryly before he answered. He would have to wait and see how she managed in a fight before passing lasting judgment. "You'd be surprised, actually. A lot of the swords I can create have more exotic effects that I think could rival even your glyphs. I also used to know someone that you remind me of a lot, an experienced Dust user. She preferred to use crystals rather than powder, but we trained a lot in the past, and I'm sure some of the same principles would carry over."

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "You knew someone who primarily used Dust crystals? Do you know how much those cost? Even I couldn't afford to use them as a primary tool, and I'm a _Schnee._ Was she someone I would have heard of? She must have been rich, and with money comes influence and fame."

Shirou laughed. "No, she wasn't rich. She might have been, but she spent practically all the money she had on more crystals. As you said, it was a fairly costly fighting style, but I can't argue with its power or effectiveness. Besides, she had other tricks for when using Dust was too costly."

Weiss scoffed daintily. "Well, a Schnee need not resort to petty tricks. My skill alone is enough to achieve victory."

"Oh?" Shirou asked with a cocky smile. "Well, I happen to be fairly skilled at emulating her style, if you care to test yourself against such 'petty tricks.'"

Weiss smiled back with just as much confidence. "You wish to fight me using someone else's style rather than your own? I won't go easy on you, you know."

"Ha! Other people's styles _are_ my styles!" Shirou laughed. "Which would you prefer to fight against? All out usage of Dust crystals, or the more conservative style?"

"Well, naturally I wouldn't want to face anything but your best." She then frowned slightly. "But, I thought you said your Semblance couldn't create Dust?"

"That's true, but I can do a pretty close approximation." He smiled, and flooded his circuits with Prana. "You'll see."

"Very well, then," Weiss said with a flourish of her rapier that spun the dust chamber. "Let us begin!"

Shirou first action was to spring to his right in a diving dodge as Weiss, predictably, lunged for him along a path of white glyphs.

Myrtenaster really reminded him more of an Azoth Dagger than a proper rapier. It was too short, for one thing, and was certainly more of a channeling tool for her Dust than a properly designed melee weapon, but still, that wouldn't save him from being stabbed, especially when it's effective reach could be extended through application of dust. Sure enough, a few feet from the tip of the weapon, a huge, spiked chunk of ice seemed to grow directly from the stage, skewering the empty air he had been standing in a moment before.

An icicle, even an oversized one, probably wouldn't be enough to pierce through his armor, Reinforced as it was. He'd be in a little more trouble, though, if the ice had grown around and enveloped him, pinning him down, so it was better safe than sorry.

Weiss spun out of her lunge as Shirou rose out of his crouch, Tracing a dagger as he did, preparing to dodge away again.

That was the primary difference between Weiss' and Rin's fighting styles, after all. Weiss preferred to fight at close range, where her glyphs would take effect faster and be easier to control, and where she could support her Dust usage with rapid thrusts of her weapon. Rin, at least when fully utilizing her gems, was more of a long range fighter.

You wouldn't want to stand next to a grenade when it went off, after all.

Weiss seemed to have already realized this as well, and was thus attempting to close the distance even faster than she normally would in attempt to prevent Shirou from using destructive techniques.

She ran at him again, unassisted by glyphs this time, as she instead opted to create a glyph off to either side in an attempt to stop him from dodging. With the stage's protective forcefield to his back, it would have pinned him in effectively, had he not possessed superhuman strength.

He jumped up and backwards, Reinforced legs propelling him well over a meter into the air, and he rotated forwards slightly so his feet came to rest against the invisible barrier for a fraction of a second before he pushed off again. The second leap carried him in a graceful dive over his opponent.

Weiss reacted admirably, smoothly pivoting in such a manner that she never took her eyes off of Shirou, only for those same pale blue eyes to widen as he twisted in midair and launched the dagger in his hands directly at her.

The dagger, though not a Noble Phantasm, was still by no means a mundane blade. Shirou could not project Dust, the miracle gem that came pre-filled with prana, but he _could _project the next best thing — anything in the shape of a sword was a perfect receptacle for his own prana, and he could pump his constructs full to bursting in an instant, whereas even a genius of a mage like Rin could take days to fully charge a gemstone.

The dagger, one of the many that he had seen projected at some point by Archer, was enchanted heavily with runes of wind, originally designed to allow the wielder to strike with extreme speed. Shirou, being Shirou, opted not to use it for that function, and Broke it instead.

By flushing the weapon exactly full of prana, and then adding just a _little _bit more in an extremely delicate process, he was able to destabilize it dangerously, to the point where an impact of suitable force would cause it to explosively detonate.

Such as the impact of it striking the hard ground of the stage, after Weiss nimbly dodged it with a small hop.

The dagger exploded in a burst of steel shrapnel, but more importantly, with a localized rush of gale-force winds. Weiss was slammed heavily against the stage's barrier and pelted with shrapnel that chipped away at her Aura further, while Shirou rode the force of the wind to propel himself further and ignored the sharp steel that pinged off his armored back.

Weiss fell to her knees as she slid down the forcefield before staggering back to her feet. She shook her head slightly to clear it and glanced at the Aura reader above the stage.

"Thirty percent?!" She practically screamed in disbelief.

Shirou, now standing at the opposite side of the stage from where he'd started, shrugged. "I know, not quite as powerful as a real Dust crystal, but it's the best I can do. One of Rin's, or the one that Roman Torchwick threw at Ruby, would have been at least twice as powerful."

Weiss looked down at the powdered Dust in her rapier with a scowl. Shirou thought he sensed a hint of inadequacy in her expression, and tried to cheer her up a little. "Still, though, like you said, use of Dust crystals instead of powder is rare and expensive. Even if you could be taken down in two or three successful attacks, not many people have the funds to be able to throw around crystals like they're disposable. Not to mention that I'm sure you could easily integrate them into your own style, if you managed to get your hands on some."

"O-of course," Weiss replied, still a little shell-shocked. "I suppose it would be… arrogant of me, to assume that a powder based style would be superior to a crystal based one. P-perhaps I shall devote a portion of my allowance towards acquiring some of my own."

"Do you want to keep going like this? Or maybe I can show you how she fought when she wasn't making heavy use of crystals?" Shirou asked, looking at the Aura reader. Weiss' Aura was very slowly recharging, but if he hit her with a few more Broken weapons, it would still hit zero pretty fast.

Weiss seemed to realize this as well, and nodded as she took a deep breath to ready herself. "Very well," she said, and then immediately began waving her weapon in intricate patterns, several glyphs springing into being behind her.

Good, she didn't hesitate to try and get the drop on him. Shirou approved. She was also seemingly warier of closing the distance with him again after experiencing an explosion to the face the last time she'd tried.

Oh well, Shirou mused. Now it was his turn to close the gap between them.

Within him, he held the blueprint for a specific Azoth dagger, one used both by Kotomine Kirei and, more recently, by Rin herself. It was infrequent that either of them would actually use the dagger to fight, but from what little they had, he still had managed to record a great deal of their martial skill. Both magi were practiced in Bajiquan, a Chinese martial art that was especially deadly when combined with Reinforcement. It was a style centered around the concepts of moving and striking along the shortest route possible, and transferring energy in such a way that the insides were damaged rather than the outside.

It was that knowledge that he drew upon as the white and orange glyphs behind Weiss began to shoot out bolts of force and fire towards him.

The projectiles were too slow for someone like him, Reinforced as he was. Using short, forceful bursts of strength from his legs, he essentially slid across the ground towards Weiss, narrowly brushing past each attack as it drew near him and barely altering his stance.

Weiss narrowed her eyes as Shirou approached, readying her sword. Perhaps it was overkill for a friendly spar, but she _had_ just been handily defeated moments before, and her pride would not accept such an outcome out of hand, so she rotated Myrtenaster's cylinder to yellow Dust — lightning, one of her rarer and more expensive types. With a moment of concentration and a release of Dust, a new glyph appeared directly beneath her, one that shone like gold and had markings reminiscent of a clock's face.

Shirou pushed off the ground one final time as he dodged the last fireball, his empty fist rocketing towards the unarmored girl who stood before him just as her outline suddenly began to blur.

Her parry was fast, far faster than he'd expected, and his gauntlet sparked off her blade. Had he truly had Kirei's skill, he might have still been able to strike before she could react, but he simply wasn't as physically fit as Kirei was in his prime. It seemed that his strike was also far faster than Weiss had expected, as even with her sudden acceleration, she found herself hard-pressed to defend herself, let alone to counterattack.

What followed next could only be described as a flurry of blows — more drawn from Rin this time than Kirei, even if the former had been the latter's student. Punches, kicks, elbows, all delivered at breakneck speeds, and each met with a flash of silvery steel. Weiss was being pushed back, but she was holding her own, managing to deflect each attack without significant damage to her Aura.

Shirou was genuinely impressed at the heiress' skill, but he _had _promised to show her some tricks, so it was probably time to change things up a bit.

He paused in his relentless attack, masking his willingness to cede the initiative behind a feigned overextension. Weiss' eyes, still faintly glowing gold with the power of her acceleration, narrowed in triumph, and she immediately pressed forward — good, she hadn't caught his deception.

A thrust high was narrowly dodged with a dip of the head. A slash from the right was deflected by an armored forearm. A thrust low was almost casually stepped over — oh. He'd forgotten about the Dust. Just as he'd feared earlier, the sudden growth of an iceberg beneath him had encased him up to the waist. Weiss sprung away from him, smiling widely and assured of her victory. Her Dust chamber began to spin, but settled quickly, and the entire length of her blade lit up white. Some kind of finishing move.

Well, to a practitioner of Bajiquan, even restraints meant little. So long as he was rooted to the ground, he should be able to break free — even without room to move, if he put all the force in his body into one explosive burst of motion… he just needed to time it right to get Weiss to use the attack he was waiting for.

She shot forward like a bullet, propelled by one of her glyphs, in a lunge straight for center mass. She was not expecting the ice covering Shirou's legs to suddenly explode, or for a high kick to rocket out of the debris and deflect her rapier up, well over his head.

She was still accelerated, however, and she still had time to try to salvage her attack. Before the momentum of her charge sent her into him, she swung down in an overhead blow.

Perfect. He stepped far into her guard, practically pressed against her body, in a movement that rivaled if not surpassed her speed, as he caught her descending left wrist with his own left hand. Her eyes widened.

If he had been Kirei, he would have driven his elbow _through _Weiss' sternum, using the Six Grand Opening - Elbow Upthrust. He wasn't quite sure how an attack designed to penetrate through outer layers and damage one's interior would interact with Aura, however, and he _was_ trying to emulate Rin instead, so…

He continued to glide forward with the momentum of his step, smoothly sliding around her left side even as he pulled Weiss further forward by the wrist to get her off balance. As he moved, he spun, until he was directly behind her and facing her defenseless back. He let go of her wrist as he wrapped both arms around her slender waist.

He then pulled hard as he pushed up with his legs and arched his back. Weiss let out what was probably the most undignified sound he'd ever heard her make, somewhere in between a shriek and a squawk, as he effortlessly lifted her off her feet and pulled off a textbook German Suplex, slamming his sparring partner's upper back hard against the stage.

Rin had apparently learned _that _move from a blonde foreigner, and had hated being subjected to it so much that she swore to master it herself.

He didn't give Weiss time to recover from the disorienting move. He rolled out of it himself, and in the next instant, he was kneeling over Weiss' stomach. Still flat on her back, she swung at him awkwardly, somehow having kept hold of Myrtenaster, but he easily caught her wrist. He caught the other as well with his second hand when she awkwardly tried to punch him as a follow up, and pinned them both to the ground beside her head.

Still struggling wildly, and with a rather impressive display of flexibility, she shot up a leg high enough to actually kick the back of his head with the toe of her boot, the first solid strike she'd landed on him for the entire class so far. As she dropped her leg, chambering it for another kick, he snaked one leg back past that damnably poofy skirt and hooked one ankle around her bare mid-thigh, and then repeated the action on the other side before she got any more funny ideas. She could still move her legs to a degree, but he had enough leverage and weight to stop her from using them effectively to strike at him.

In a more serious fight, he probably would have been pummeling her face rather than trying to pin her down, but something felt wrong about doing that to a girl so much smaller than him.

She bucked and writhed below him for a few more moments, but his grip was of iron and his center of balance was absolute. With his own weight added to that of his armor, there was simply no way for the slight girl to get enough leverage or use enough strength to dislodge him. Now it was just a matter of letting her exhaust herself until she gave up.

"Mister Emiya." The voice cut across their stage, somehow far more chilling than even Weiss' ever had been.

Shirou and Weiss both completely froze before they slowly inclined their heads to one side. Professor Goodwitch stood beside their stage with riding crop in hand, arms crossed, her ever-present scowl carved into her features as though she were an ice sculpture.

"While I appreciate the use of unconventional tactics to subdue your enemy, you are distracting the rest of the class." Her frown deepened. "Please, get off of Miss Schnee."

Shirou, surprised, looked back down beneath him, and his amber eyes locked with equally startled ice blue ones. Now that the combat had come to a sudden, grinding halt, he was able to view the position he was in a little more objectively.

His face was scant inches from Weiss' delicate features. Her usually alabaster skin was flushed with adrenaline, adding a pale rosy tint to her cheeks. Equally flushed lips gasped for air, and a thin sheen of sweat almost made her sparkle in the bright light of the classroom.

His arms pinned hers just above her head, pulling his upper body yet closer to hers. His legs disappeared momentarily into the folds of her disheveled skirt, which had slightly hiked up, before reappearing, their gunmetal armor contrasting with the creamy skin of the legs they were intertwined with. Weiss' back was frozen mid-arch, the relic of one final attempt to cast him off.

Oh. This was awkward.

He seemed to come to the realization that their position might be… _misconstrued, _to say the least,at the exact moment that Weiss herself did. Her face lit up with an entirely different shade of red that seemed to travel all the way up to the tips of her ears, and she made another weird noise — something like a squeak mixed with a yelp, but with the volume of a whimper. He was sure the shade of his own face must have been a close match to hers.

He hastily extricated himself from her and backed off a few meters as Weiss rapidly got to her feet and dusted herself off, still practically glowing with redness and refusing to meet the eyes of anyone else in the room.

And, true to Glynda's word, they did in fact seem to be the center of attention. He wasn't sure whether it was the grappling or Glynda's interference that had ultimately captured the stares of everyone else, but all other spars had come to a halt as well. He took a moment to scan the room for the faces he knew.

Cardin and co. looked like they hated him, but that was nothing new. Ruby was blushing slightly, but at least she offered him a slight smile when she saw him looking at her. Her partner, Nora, seemed to be one of the few people in the room with divided attentions — while she had seemingly been staring at them with a lascivious smile, it seemed her thoughts were elsewhere, as she kept shooting glances over at Ren. The leader of team RVBY himself didn't seem to notice, as he was busy trying to get Blake's attention and ask if she was ok — she was at least as red as he and Weiss were, seemed to be breathing heavy, and her bow was twitching wildly.

Weird. Maybe she had been training really hard with Ren. But… was she recording them on her scroll?

Pyrrha and Yang were the hardest to read. They both looked conflicted, Yang like she wasn't sure whether to be pleased or upset, and Pyrrha with a lot of similarities to Blake, but more of a frown, and also a strange… possessive, perhaps, glint to her eyes.

It was all a little confusing. He wished people were as easy to read as swords were.

"Are you alright, Miss Schnee?" Professor Goodwitch asked, though her disapproving glare never strayed from Shirou.

"Y-yes, Professor," Weiss replied, still flustered. "Shirou is a skilled opponent. He is as well-trained in… u-unarmed combat as he is with a sword." Her body tried its best to blush even harder as it realized what she'd just said, but unfortunately, that wasn't really a possibility at this point.

Glynda, however, managed to find new depths to her frown. "I'm sure he is," she said drily. "Still, I think it would be wise if we stuck to _weapon _techniques for the remainder of class, don't you both think?"

Shirou gulped loudly and nodded. Weiss jerked her head up and down as well.

Glynda spun around. "Did I tell the rest of you to stop training? Back to it, please!"

Something about her tone had the rest of the class hurrying back to work before she was even done talking.

As the classroom once more began to fill with noise, Glynda stepped closer to Weiss and Shirou and spoke more quietly, so that only they could hear. "And if, in the future, you _must _utilize unarmed techniques, _please _refrain from mounting one another in my classroom. Save it for your free time." She turned and began to stalk back to her seat before waiting for either of them to react, but Shirou thought he saw the hint of a smirk as she turned away. Weiss let out another strangled squeak.

As soon as the professor was out of earshot, Weiss spun to Shirou, face still ablaze and with a scowl that could have rivaled Glynda's own.

"_You!_" She all but growled as she took a few steps towards him and jabbed her finger hard into his chest.

"Me?" he asked. Damn, he really needed to work on his quick-thinking skills.

"You…" Although, she did seem to be somewhat at a loss for words herself. She crossed her arms and turned to one side so she wasn't looking directly at him. "You'd better take responsibility for this!" She mumbled. "You embarrassed me in front of the whole class!"

"Ah, I'm sorry, Weiss. I guess I got carried away," he said with an earnestly sad frown. He stepped forward and gently brushed a hand against her shoulder, which caused her gaze to snap back to his. "I didn't want to hurt you, so I was trying to make you submit non-violently." He also noticed somewhere in the back of his head that she'd only said she was upset about the embarrassment, and not what he'd done to her, but he thought it wise not to bring that up.

She still looked pretty pissed, so he took the only option left open to him, a technique forged in fire and tested against some of the strongest women he'd ever met — with a near perfect success rate.

He took a half step towards her and widened his eyes ever so slightly more, locking his gaze with Weiss as though to look into her very soul, staring at her as though she were the only other person in the world.

His face locked into a visage of perfect concern, and when he spoke after a slight pause, his voice was slow, smooth, and bore not a trace of anything other than perfect sincerity. "I'm sorry. I promise, I'll take responsibility, and I will do anything to make it up to you."

And he would, of course. None of it was a trick — that was what made it so effective. He hated making people unhappy, and he would do whatever it took to spare Weiss the embarrassment he'd forced her into. He'd learned, however, pretty recently in fact, exactly _how _to state his apologies in a way that didn't usually end in him getting Excaliblasted, or swarmed by worms, or cursed, or, in the worst possible scenario, having Illya mad at him.

Weiss stared back, looking a little startled, but the tension seemed to seep out of her as a renewed blush once more made its way to her cheeks. She broke eye contact first, with a cute little huffing noise. "Idiot…" She grumbled, but Shirou could see the ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "W-well, you did beat me, fair and square. I suppose. Y-you can start to make it up to me by teaching me some of those moves. They were… _unorthodox,_ but I can't say they weren't effective."

He smiled — he could tell that was about as close to 'I accept your apology' as he was going to get. "Of course, Weiss. I'd be happy to."

o-o-o-o-o

Weiss' mood had markedly increased by the end of the class. After a brief rest for her to recover her lost Aura, which Shirou had spent explaining the theory behind some of the moves he'd used, they'd sparred more sedately, with advice being passed back and forth in between each small exchange.

Bajiquan wasn't a perfect match for the style Weiss had already established for herself, but some of its principles were universally useful nonetheless.

In fact, by the time they left the classroom, she had _almost _forgiven him, if the reduced frequency and intensity of the glares she continued to pin him with were any indication.

"So Ruby, Pyrrha, how did you both do against Nora and Yang?" Shirou asked as they made their way back to their dorm room.

"I did alright," Ruby said, clearly a little unhappy with her performance. "We were pretty evenly matched, but that was with me using my Semblance as best I could, and I don't think Nora used hers at all. Not to mention that she barely used any grenades. So basically, I tied against someone who was handicapping themselves."

"That's still great, Ruby!" Shirou encouraged her. "Nora's one of the strongest in our year. In fact, I think Team RVBY is probably the only one that could challenge team RESN for best team in the class."

"And you still did better than me," Weiss chimed in. "I mean, I knew Shirou was good, but I didn't manage to win a single match against him, and I barely landed any hits on him."

"Aww, thanks, guys!" Ruby beamed at the support. "I'm sure you'll get him eventually, Weiss! How about you, Pyrrha?"

"Well, your sister is certainly skilled as well," Pyrrha answered, "but I did manage to win all of my bouts with her today."

"Good job!" Shirou said, patting her on the back.

Pyrrha smiled at her praise as well. "She seems really determined to beat me, however. I might need to put in some extra training time to make sure I stay ahead of her."

Weiss sighed. "I'll no doubt have to do the same, if I don't want Shirou to keep crushing me. I'd offer to train with you, Pyrrha, but I think I'll get quite enough of being handily beaten during class."

"I could train with you, Weiss! I need to get better too!" Ruby threw her hands into the air excitedly.

"Then… Shirou, would you do me the honor of training with me outside of class?" Pyrrha asked.

"Of course, Pyrrha. We're partners, after all," Shirou replied with an easy smile.

Weiss paled, though it was hard to tell with her already alabaster complexion. "Oh no. I know I should be pleased that our team is going to get even stronger as a whole, but somehow the idea of the two strongest students in our class – possibly all of Beacon – making each other even better fills me with dread."

Shirou laughed. "Don't worry, Weiss. You're really good too, and so is Ruby. I'm not exaggerating at all when I say we're probably the best all-around team in our year."

"Pfft, thanks to you and Pyrrha, maybe," Ruby snorted. "I mean, I'm going to try to catch up, but you two could probably take on a whole other team by yourselves."

"Just having skilled fighters doesn't necessarily make a team good on its own, though," he countered. "To really be the best, you need to be well-rounded and versatile. Your Semblance, for example, gives our team a huge advantage in battlefield control. You can move to support a weak front in an instant, or set up flanking maneuvers that would otherwise be impossible – it's a perfect Semblance for a leader. And Weiss, your glyphs have more applications than I can even list, especially when used to support – just imagine Pyrrha under the effects of that acceleration glyph you used today. Pyrrha and I alone might be strong, sure…"

"But all together, we'll be unstoppable!" Ruby finished for him, jumping in the air excitedly.

"Exactly. And that's not even to mention the fact that both of you are leagues ahead of the majority of the class in terms of pure combat skill. Glynda knows what she's doing – the fact that she matched us all with strong sparring partners just shows how highly she values our abilities."

"Yeah, you're right! Woohoo, go Team RESN!" Ruby cheered. Her cheer was contagious, and the rest of the team found themselves smiling as well.

"So Shirou, does tonight work for you? The rooftops in the evening are a good place to train, I hear," Pyrrha asked.

"Sounds good to me," Shirou answered. "Although, I did promise that I'd make Ruby cookies this weekend, so I'll have to beg off on Saturday, if that's alright."

"Of course! So, tonight around… seven, then?" Pyrrha smiled at him, hands clasped behind her back, as Ruby squealed in excitement at the reminder of baked-goods-to-come.

"Seven works. It's a date, then," he said, smiling back.

He turned away to laugh at their excitable leader as she ran in circles around them, trailing rose petals as she did, and unfortunately missed the pretty blush on Pyrrha's face as a result.

It was all Pyrrha could do to contain her glee. _A date!_

o-o-o-o-o

**Hello, and sorry again for the last chapter! As I said, it was that or make you all wait a long time for another chapter, as I've been pretty busy lately. I know people are here primarily for Shirou and co., but I wanted to get Jaune and Cu at least slightly entrenched into the story so it doesn't just come out of the blue if I want to use or reference them later.**

**This chapter is short too, but it at least has a little more meat to it, and some character development/relationship point building for Weiss. As I've mentioned, updates are probably going to keep being around this length for the time being – I'm writing when I have the time, which isn't often (In this case, 90% of the chapter was written during my daily walks to and from work on my phone, which takes me around an hour and a half round trip), so unless people want month long waits for longer chapters, I'll keep releasing chapters whenever I have a big enough chunk of writing done to justify it. **

**Planning on next chapter to be Pyrrha focused! Thanks again for reading and reviewing!**


	7. Chapter 7

By the time Shirou made it to the rooftops, Pyrrha was already there.

Beacon had coed locker rooms, at least for where people stored their armor and weapons, but there were separate changing areas to preserve the students' modesty. Since Pyrrha's armor basically consisted of a hardened leather tunic, a short skirt, and assorted pieces of armor on her limbs, she was able to change much faster than Shirou could with his significantly bulkier gear, so she'd called over to the men's side that she would scout out a good spot and send the location to his scroll.

As he stepped through the doorway into the crisp, clean air on top of one of Beacon's towers, he immediately was able to conclude that she'd made an excellent choice.

Before him spread an incredible vista. The Emerald Forest was on clear display just past the cliffs Beacon rested upon, stretching in an unbroken blanket of green all the way to the jagged peaks of the mountain range that stretched across the horizon. More immediately, and no less impressive, Ozpin's own tower scraped the heavens to one side of their rooftop, a technological marvel of glass and churning gears that for some reason resonated strongly with Shirou. The entire view was suffused in the golden light of the still slowly setting sun.

And then there was Pyrrha. She stood near the edge of the rooftop, staring out at the view, but turned to face him at the sound of the opening door. Her vibrant red hair was haloed by the sunset, augmented by the reflection off of her already gold-tinted armor, her entire body seeming to glow with the illusion of radiant flame and contrasting brilliantly with her viridian eyes, which seemed to light up even brighter as she saw him and offered him a warm and earnest smile.

Unbidden, a flash of a memory shot through his mind – that of a different armored figure. Clad in silver and cerulean, rather than gold and scarlet. The pale glow of the moon illuminating blonde hair, rather than that of the sun enkindling crimson. But – the same deep, striking emerald eyes.

He knew, as he took in the sight of Pyrrha silhouetted against the fading light, that the scene would remain forever as crystal clear in his memory as his first meeting with Saber had.

Just like that time, he had no words. He could only stare.

Pyrrha walked towards him smoothly as he stood frozen in the doorway, coming to a stop a couple of meters away. "Beautiful, isn't it?" she asked softly.

He nodded slightly, unable to pull his gaze away from her. A frisson of warmth swept its way down his spine. "Yes," he answered, his eyes still locked with hers. "Beautiful."

She broke eye contact first, blushing lightly and still smiling happily. They walked in silence back to the edge and watched in silence for a few minutes as the sun made its way down past the mountains.

She broke the silence first as well. "It reminds me of Mistral. My home. I used to love to sit on the beach and watch the sunset. That's why when I designed my weapons, I engraved Akoúo̱ with waves around the edge – so I can take the ocean with me, wherever I go." Her smile was nostalgic, and her right arm came up to idly rub the similarly engraved band she wore around her left bicep.

"I grew up near the ocean too," Shirou responded. "The coast was to the north, but Fuyuki had some really tall buildings, and right through the center of town there was a beautiful bridge, so there were still lots of good places to watch the sunset."

She turned to face him. "Do you miss your home, Shirou? If you don't want to talk about it, it's fine, but…" Her eyes shone with concern. "Every time it comes up, it seems like you just… brush it off, I guess. Like it doesn't matter. But I- we can tell it does."

"Hey, hey," Shirou laughed lightly. "Did we come up here to talk about Fuyuki, or to train? It'll get dark soon, you know."

Pyrrha raised one eyebrow and lightly punched his arm, but the side of her mouth twitched up a bit as she did so. "Exactly. You brush it off just like that."

He smiled again. "Well, maybe it's because I never want to spoil the mood? I don't want you all to be sad, and some of the details might not be fun to hear."

"But we don't want _you _to be sad either. Talking things out can help, and the more we know about you, the better we can help too."

"Fine," he accepted. "If it really means that much to you all, I suppose I can share a little more when we get back. After all, I don't want to distract you before our spar," he cheekily added.

Pyrrha smiled competitively. "Oh? How chivalrous of you. But thank you, really. It will mean a lot to all of us." She turned around and walked to a position a few meters away, drawing her sword and unslinging her shield with smooth waves of her hands as she did, before facing him once more. "Now, then. Standard rules?"

"Sure, but you'd better not go for a ring-out," he joked, sparing a glance to the long fall from the rooftop.

Pyrrha snorted. "Of course. I'm ready when you are." She took up a defensive posture. Low center of gravity, shield and left foot forward, sword raised threateningly above and behind it.

Shirou silently mused on how best to take her on. Not many Huntsmen favored a shield, preferring to just rely on Aura, but Pyrrha certainly made it work. He knew from reading the history of her weapons that Akoúo̱ was just as potent a ranged weapon as Miló was in its rifle or javelin forms, in addition to the defensive capabilities it offered her. The primary benefit of her shield used offensively, however, was that it would allow her to quickly close distances in relative safety. If he engaged her with a longer ranged weapon, like a bow, or even a spear, she would rush inside his guard and render his weapon useless. If he went for something shorter, she would be able to overwhelm him with her superior strength and speed at close range, even if he did have a fair edge in skill copied from his multitudes of weapons.

Of course, many of those weapons were Noble Phantasms that could have ended the fight in a single blow, but he would really prefer not to murder or maim his teammate, or to blow up the school, so those were right out.

Breaking lightly enchanted weapons to act as explosives, as he'd done against Weiss, was perhaps an option, but there was still the question of collateral damage to the building when using those, so he preferred to rule them out as well.

So basically, he was restricted to mundane weapons, such as those copied from his classmates, but, no matter which weapon he chose, he would probably still lose, because Pyrrha could _beat_ all of their classmates. He could try to draw on the skills of the Heroic Spirits he'd copied weapons from… for example, he could Trace an oversized nodachi and copy the sword style of Assassin, but his body just wasn't capable of performing the same moves effectively – he lacked the base parameters.

By offering him the opportunity to attack her first, she was giving him the early advantage, letting him decide the flow of the fight. It spoke of confidence – well placed confidence, because no matter which weapon he brought to bear against her, he would ultimately lose.

So, then, it really came down to two options. One was to pick a weapon and style that were specifically designed to counter an opponent that was superior in every attribute _but _skill. In fact, one such style stood out in his mind, one that utilized a twinned pair of Chinese falchions… but he'd never liked copying _that _man directly, even if he was perfectly willing to shamelessly copy all of his weapons.

The other option was to simply use so many different weapons in tandem that he would be able to overwhelm any advantage Pyrrha might hold – as long as he kept up the momentum, he would have a shot.

He slowly smiled. He had plenty of prana to spare, no real reason to save it, and it would be more fun than trying to bait her into attacking intentionally exposed weak spots, so, why not?

"_Trace, On!" _he intoned, flushing prana through all of his circuits and setting the jagged green lines that ran along his right arm aglow. In an instant, he was fully Reinforced.

He charged, empty handed. By waiting until the last moment before his strike to Project a weapon, he could disguise the length and reach of his planned attack, not too dissimilar from the way Saber used Invisible Air to conceal Excalibur.

He began his swing, a diagonal downward chop from the upper right, while he was still a couple of meters away from Pyrrha, and mid-attack, Projected his first weapon. There was a second-year student, named Yatsuhashi Daichi, who favored a massive single-edged great sword. It wasn't the blade of Heracles, but it was close enough for Shirou's purposes.

Pyrrha raised Akoúo̱ without hesitation, beginning the block even before the blade appeared. Her shield arm was strong, managing to deflect even Yatsuhashi's giant sword with minimal effort off to her left, and her right hand was already thrusting forward with Miló for a counterattack – but Shirou was no longer holding his weapon.

As soon as the blade had formed in his hands, and he'd steered it well enough to strike where he wanted it, he loosened his grip, such that as the sword impacted Pyrrha's shield, his hands continued onwards past the hilt along their original trajectory. Unburdened by the weight of the heavy weapon, the instant his hands passed by Akoúo̱ he abruptly reversed their momentum and began an empty-handed swing in the opposite direction. An instant after that, a copy of Magnhild was rushing towards Pyrrha.

She was forced to turn her stab into a hasty parry, twisting her wrist around and barely managing to deflect the hammer over her ducking head – but again, the weapon was no longer held by her opponent.

As he let go of the hammer and immediately arrested the momentum of his arms once more, he Traced two more weapons – Myrtenaster in his right, which he thrust forward at Pyrrha's lowered face, and one of Russel's daggers in his left, held in a backhanded grip, which plunged down towards the back of her neck.

Positioned as she was, all she saw was the short rapier plunging towards her. Her eyes shot open wide, and in an impressive display of speed and flexibility, she simultaneously converted the momentum of her duck into a circular motion to the left and arched backwards until her back was almost parallel to the ground.

Weiss' blade brushed past her, just centimeters above her head, but with both of her armaments deflected and in an awkward position, the dagger caught her on her unprotected collarbone.

Her Aura easily absorbed the blow, assisted by the fact that the instant it impacted her, she rolled smoothly back with the momentum of the attack, attempting to regain some distance.

Unrelenting, Shirou immediately dropped both weapons, Tracing in their place both components of Ren's Stormflower. He immediately released both of them as well, throwing one of the aerodynamic blades to each side, and lunged forward with a hastily created copy of Sky Lark's polearm.

Pyrrha came out of her roll and continued the motion backwards, flowing into a straight backflip. One armored leg caught the thrusting spear and kicked it up and away, even as she shifted Miló into its rifle form and squeezed off a shot at him. Shirou would have been knocked back with the spear, had he not once more let go of his weapon. Instead, he continued his forward charge unarmed, took the bullet on his Reinforced armor without slowing down, and rocketed an armored elbow into her arched back mid-flip.

She was sent flying back several meters further than she intended, but she still managed to right herself in midair and land on her feet – just in time for the twin bladed pistols of Stormflower to converge on her position, both of them acting as boomerangs.

She had very little time to react, and acted instinctively – she thrust both of her arms downwards, and for a brief second, they were enveloped in a black cloud of energy. Abruptly, both pistols slammed to the ground.

Shirou paused, and raised one eyebrow. "Nice Semblance," he said with a smirk.

"Ha!" Pyrrha let out a shout of exultation as she gathered herself. "Well, I suppose it's no secret anymore. Polarity – I can move around ferrous objects. Would you believe that in all my fights, I've never once had to use it that overtly before?"

"I would, actually," he said as he stepped forward. "Let me guess, subtle movements here and there to throw opponents off?"

Pyrrha nodded. "I would have used it earlier, but with how much you kept switching weapons, I never had the chance to get a less obvious hold."

"Well," he said, "It's only fair that you use it, blatantly or not. After all, I'm using mine, aren't I?"

"To full effect," she noted wryly.

"Well, not quite," he said with a knowing smile. "But anyways, why do you care about how obviously you use it?"

Pyrrha blinked at the unexpected question. "Well… because if people figured out how it worked, then I would lose the ace up my sleeve. It's common practice in the tournament circuits to hide your Semblance, so you always have it in reserve."

Shirou scoffed. "What, you're afraid someone will counter it? What are they going to do, use wooden swords and leather armor exclusively?"

Pyrrha blushed. "It's common practice, I swear!"

"I'm just saying," he laughed, "there's not much that can really be done against it. At any time, you could have seized control of any of the weapons I used, right? And then turned them against me. Making so many weapons would have made it even worse than if I'd just stuck with one."

"But… you just said you were holding back some of your Semblance as well!" she shot back in a desperate verbal counterattack.

"Naturally. I would hate to permanently damage my lovely partner, after all," he said as his teasing grin grew ever wider.

"Hmph! You jerk!" she exclaimed, smiling as well. "Like you just admitted – if I had gone after you with my Semblance from the start, the fight would have been over before it even began!"

"I knew you wouldn't, though, and now look whose Aura is down…" he pulled his out his Scroll, opening the Aura tracking function. "Twenty percent! Huh, that's it?" His own Aura was down a bit as well, simply from the prana expenditure of tracing so many well-made weapons so quickly.

"What, you thought it would be over that easily?" she asked, adopting the cocky smile that had just fallen off of his face as her own. "And now that I know your tricks, and my Semblance is out in the open…"

"Uh…" Shirou chuckled nervously, rapidly trying to mentally sort through all the non-ferrous, non-immediately-lethal, and still somewhat effective weapons in his arsenal. There were surprisingly few of them – not to mention the fact that he was currently wearing steel armor. "Have I mentioned yet that you're an amazingly skilled fighter, and that I've only done this well so far because of luck?" He desperately tried to stall for time.

Her eyes narrowed. It was all the warning he received before she was in motion. Her arm reared back and snapped forward, and Miló in its javelin form shot forth, propelled not only by her prodigious strength, but also the sharp retort of a Dust explosion from the spear's butt and the black nimbus of her Semblance.

Shirou reacted the way that he normally did when weaponry was hurtling towards him at high speeds – he copied it. Miló turned aside Miló with a clash of metal in a rapid parry.

Pyrrha had begun to spin the moment the spear left her hand, and Shirou did the same, tracing a copy of Akoúo̱ as well. Pyrrha released her shield only a fraction of a second before he loosed his own, but still the discus-like armament nearly reached him before its flight path was interrupted by its twin, both sparking off to either side.

As it normally did after hitting a target, the shield Pyrrha had thrown began to arc gracefully back towards her, a feat that was, physically speaking, improbable to say the least. If truly nobody had figured out her Semblance, it was little wonder that she had built a reputation as an impossibly skilled warrior.

Shirou's shield, however, did the same – not towards himself, but _also _towards Pyrrha.

Simultaneously, he felt a tug on the weapon in his hand. He instantly let go of it, and it shot towards Pyrrha as well. He sidestepped, and sure enough, Pyrrha's original blade sliced through the air where he'd been standing a moment before on its own path back to its owner.

Pyrrha's brow furrowed in confusion as both shields tried to slam into place on her arm. The first, she caught as intended, but the second coming down directly over it was an unexpected additional impact that she wasn't prepared for, and it knocked her slightly off balance.

She nearly fumbled the catch on the first Miló that approached her, the one pulled from Shirou's hands, but ultimately managed. The second, however, caught her with her hands full, and its hilt slammed into her knuckles where they already held its copy. The impact was enough to make her drop it with a quick cry of surprise, and both blades clattered to the ground beside her.

"What?" she half mumbled, staring at the identical swords. She wasn't distracted for long, however, and her eyes shot back towards Shirou. She rapidly knelt and grabbed one of the blades at random. He was already holding a third pair of her chosen weapons, and was charging at her with a wide grin, shield raised. She released her Semblance's hold on the second shield she'd accidentally stuck to her arm, letting it drop, and braced herself to meet him.

For a moment, her Semblance went forgotten as they clashed, though she still felt as if the weapons in his hands, and those on the ground next to her, were as intimately familiar as her own. Deeming it too confusing to focus on in the heat of the moment, she resorted, as she often did, to pure martial skill.

It was like fighting a copy of herself – he mimicked her moves perfectly. It was surreal for Pyrrha to see the boy perform the same moves that she had trained so often, like a distorted mirror – she met his swing with her shield, he gracefully flipped over her counterattack, and both of their swords shifted into spears simultaneously, sparking off of each other in identical thrusts.

They clashed rapidly for a few seconds, which was all the time Pyrrha needed to realize that she was better than him. Faster, stronger – even if he seemed as intimately familiar with her style as she herself was, she still had the edge. She smiled fiercely – if he tried to beat her with her own weapons, he would lose!

He swung heavily from his left, his weapon once more a sword. She raised her own Miló to block it – as he knew she would. As _she _knew he knew she would. What she didn't know, however, but Shirou did, was that the sword she held was the first copy he had created. It dissolved into blue motes of light just before it connected with his attack, and his sword swung through empty space to impact her upper arm heavily.

She was sent skidding backwards once again, still without having landed a proper hit on him for the entire fight.

"You're down to sixty percent!" he called out to her happily.

Her responding smile was as wide as his own. "It's not over yet!"

Shirou answered by throwing both of his weapons at her, once more using her own style to do so, and he began to run to one side.

Pyrrha reached out with her empty hand, and her original blade leapt to it from where it had lain discarded, just in time to be raised to parry the incoming shield, even as her left arm shot up and blocked the flying sword.

She lowered her Akoúo̱ as she threw her Miló once more in the form of a super-accelerated javelin, but had to quickly raise it again to block two more incoming projectiles.

Shirou ran in a wide circle around her, Tracing and throwing copies of her weapons at her as fast as he was able to. Pyrrha was forced to dodge and block in a flurry of acrobatics under his constant barrage.

It was incredibly annoying, but in the most exciting way possible. When was the last time she'd been this hard pressed? When was the last time she'd been _losing? _Each copy of her weapons was as instinctively easy to control with her Semblance as her originals, which led to great confusion as she occasionally tried to loose counterattacks at her opponent. Trying to draw a weapon back to her hand would lead to a flurry of unwanted extras that she was forced to dodge as well, adding to the already unrelenting assault, and it was only getting harder to concentrate as more and more copies were added to the fray.

She found herself pushing up against her limits – all of them. Speed, concentration, Semblance control – more and more, she found herself resorting to massive blasts of repelling force, knocking aside all of the weapons hurtling at her, just for a brief respite. Even dodging and parrying like she'd never done before, she was still relying more on her Aura to block the nicks and scrapes that managed to slip past her guard, and finding less time to try and fight back. She was going to lose.

She couldn't help but laugh loudly at the novelty of it. Even so, she wouldn't give in, and the thrill of impending loss only made her push herself even harder.

"You're thinking about them wrong!" Shirou called out, hurling another javelin and spinning to throw the sword in his other hand as well, still running in circles around her all the while.

"Ha! What… do you mean?" Pyrrha managed to gasp out through her laughter as she leapt several meters into the air and over the latest attack, curling into a tight ball and barely avoiding a gold and scarlet river of steel that flowed through the air at her – drawn to her as she once more instinctively reached for her weapon.

"You're treating it like there's _your _Miló and Akoúo̱, and then there are all of _mine!" _He shouted, launching another shield into the fray. "You're used to fighting with only one of each, but your Semblance could let you do so much more!" Another sword was sent whistling through the air, and he narrowly dodged a spear that she'd managed to throw at him while he spoke. "They're _all _yours, Pyrrha!"

It was difficult – _so _difficult – to concentrate in the middle of the storm of steel, but… he was right, wasn't he?

Her instincts screamed at her. They were practically in complete control of her body at this point – there was no way she could have dodged all of the attacks coming her way completely consciously. Those instincts wanted, no, they _needed _to have her sword in hand. They _needed _her shield to help her defend herself. They wanted her to feel the clash of an incoming weapon impacting one held by her, to face her foes head on in honorable combat for the glory of the crowd, and to conceal her Semblance.

She suppressed them, in an incredible effort of will. She stopped trying to automatically draw her weapons to her hands, and stopped trying to hold back her Semblance, and she _reached. _

Her power seeped into, and through, _all _the Milós, _all _the Akoúo̱s. Rather than try to reach for just one, to impossibly attempt to distinguish between the identical, she did what, in hindsight, felt far more natural than what she'd forcefully trained her body to do. She treated all of the weapons – _her_ weapons – as parts of a greater whole.

Her left arm swept up from the ground, glowing darkly, as if it were holding onto an imaginary shield. It felt heavy, heavier than it ever had, but Akoúo̱ responded. Dozens of shields swept up from the cluttered rooftop, snapping into place along a massive magnetic field and forming a massive wall between her and Shirou. She heard his own excited laugh match her own from the other side of the barrier even as the bulwark easily deflected his still oncoming attacks.

Her right arm followed, in what appeared as a massively telegraphed horizontal swing. As the plane of her swing passed her many fallen weapons, they snapped up and fell into formation. It was like running a magnet across a steel rod, all the poles of the metal being brought into alignment, but on a macro scale – dozens, if not _hundreds _of weapons were swept along in her magnetic field, each one pointed unerringly along the path of their flight. She lowered the shields to regain her view of Shirou and better aim her attack.

When Shirou had been attacking her, the weapons had come in like rain as he threw them, and like waves as she unintentionally used them to attack herself.

When she brought the full force of hundreds of copies of Miló to bear against him all at once, they struck like a tsunami.

There was nowhere to dodge – the wave of steel was too wide, too tall, too densely packed to try and slip through, and it scoured the rooftop as it swept along towards him. All Shirou could do was to cover his face with his forearms, leap backwards to try and flow with the momentum, and curl up into as small a profile as he could.

Even so, he was struck by many of the blades, and swept along with the force of the wave. Pyrrha shouted in joy as she finally landed a solid blow against the most difficult opponent she'd ever fought – but it quickly turned to one of horror as the unstoppable rush of metal swept him clear off the rooftop.

o-o-o-o-o

Ruby groaned as she stared at her homework. _So bored._ Weiss had still been sore from fighting Shirou earlier, so their extracurricular training had ended pretty early, and now she was stuck trying to write a stupid paper for Professor Port.

She looked around, desperate, looking for literally _anything _to distract her.

A moment later, her jaw dropped. She disappeared in an explosion of petals, and a blur of red shot towards their window. Her face pressed against the glass, frozen with the same pure joy and excitement of a child seeing snow for the first time.

Weiss was startled away from her own homework at the sudden movement. "Ruby? What is it?"

Ruby answered, without pulling her eyes away from the beautiful sight, in a high-pitched squeal of excitement.

"_Weiss, it's raining swords!"_

o-o-o-o-o

"Shirou!" Pyrrha screamed, releasing all control of the many weapons and rushing towards the edge of the roof. She skidded to a halt at the railing and leaned over it, dreading what she might see – it was far too low for a parachute, and he had to be low on Aura from overuse of his Semblance–

"I thought I said no ring-outs," Shirou complained drily, clinging with one hand to the edge of the rooftop.

o-o-o-o-o

Ozpin stood at one of the many windows of his office, looking down at the rooftops far below him.

In one hand, he held his usual cup of hot chocolate. Rather _unusually,_ it was currently being neglected – he hadn't taken a sip in several minutes.

In his other hand, he held a Scroll, pointed downwards. As the red and gold-clad figure far below him extended a hand to her more darkly colored counterpart, helping him back onto the roof, Ozpin finally pushed the button on the device that would end the recording.

He walked back to his desk and sat down, thinking. After a few moments, he lifted the Scroll once more, dialing a number from memory, and brought it to his ear. His call was answered promptly.

"Glynda?"

"_Yes, headmaster?"_

"What exactly have you been teaching the first-years in combat class so far this year?"

"_I'm… not sure what you mean, sir. I'm following the same curriculum that I always do."_

"Well. Keep up the good work." He paced back over to the window again.

"_Er… thank you, sir. I will."_

"Hmm. And, if you would, could you contact the groundskeeper and tell him there's a bit of a mess – oh, never mind. They're disappearing now."

"_... What?"_

"That will be all, Glynda. Thank you." He hung up the call.

For a few more moments, he enjoyed the lightshow far below him as the multitude of scattered weapons littering his campus slowly dissolved in bright puffs of blue.

It was already becoming quite clear which group of students he would need to keep an eye on this year.

o-o-o-o-o

"You scared me half to death!" Pyrrha complained as she easily hauled him back up and over the railing. "I thought I'd killed you!"

Shirou laughed in response. "Well that's not really my fault, is it?"

Pyrrha scowled. "I'll admit I was… caught up in the moment, and may have gone a little overboard. But you could have gotten rid of all your copies before they hit you!"

"Oh yeah." He scratched the back of his head. "I guess I could have, but I was excited for you! I wanted to see what you would do with your Semblance!"

Pyrrha snorted, but she couldn't keep from smiling. "Idiot. But… thank you. That was honestly amazing. I haven't fought anyone that skilled in a long time, and I've never just… cut loose like that with my Semblance before."

Shirou sat down and leaned against the railing, trying to let his body cool down after such an intense expenditure of prana, and began to dissipate his many Projections. Pyrrha sat down beside him, still breathing heavily herself. "Really?" he asked. "I've seen how many trophies you have. I would have expected at least some of the people you had to beat to win them to put up a decent fight."

Pyrrha blushed. "Oh, those. Yeah, not really. Maybe the first few, back when I was still relatively unknown. But the more I won, the more people saw me as… invincible. They convinced themselves that they couldn't win, so they didn't even try."

"Really? Did you try entering into harder tournaments?"

She laughed, but it was slightly bitter. "Of course. There was one just before I left for Beacon, the last tournament I fought in. It was open age bracket, anyone who hadn't yet graduated to a fully-fledged Huntsman was eligible to join. Did you know I have an older sister?"

He shook his head at the unexpected tangent.

"Patti. She's a few years older than me. Good, too. Not quite as good as me, if I'm being honest, but she's really strong too – our dad just started training me earlier, and harder. We signed up for the tournament together, and both made it to the semifinals on opposite sides of the bracket. She's in her last year at Haven now, but she was definitely one of the better third-years in the tournament – and then she lost, to a fourth-year named Hector. It was me and him in the finals."

She let out a long sigh. "I was so excited to fight someone who'd actually been able to beat my sister. It happened so rarely, and he had his own reputation too. He was supposed to be really good. And then he heard that he was up against 'the invincible girl,' and that he'd just beat up her sister, and I guess he assumed I'd be really mad at him?"

She turned to look at Shirou, frowning. "Before the fight, he went up to me and begged. He asked me to go easy on him. A fourth-year, about to graduate, begging a girl who hasn't even _entered _an academy yet to not hurt him too badly." She sighed again. "He barely put up a fight. I hate those stupid trophies."

"Why do you keep them, then?" he prodded gently.

She rolled her eyes. "Dad would be mad if I got rid of them. To him, winning is everything. Half the reason I was so motivated to get strong in the first place was to stop him from trying to coerce judges into unfairly favoring me, and even then, he couldn't stop himself from grandstanding about how unbeatable I was. I pretty much _had_ to take all the trophies with me to Beacon, or he'd just do nothing but show them off to guests and brag about how good I am all day."

Shirou laughed. "You know, I've actually won a couple of competitions myself before."

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow. "I feel like I would have heard of someone as strong as you in the tournament circuit."

"Well, they were kind of local things. Some really strong fighters competed, though. Stronger than me, for sure."

She smiled incredulously. "Now I know you're joking."

"No, really! They were, um, doubles tournaments, I guess, and my partner was really strong too. She's the one who actually taught me how to fight in the first place. Well, really fight, that is. I guess I'd done some sparring before then."

"Did she keep the trophies, then?" Her face was unreadable at his mention of a previous partner, but she kept her tone polite as she asked.

"Ah, no." He laughed sheepishly. "She kind of wanted them, but… well, the first time we won, it was a really close thing, and the cost to do so… it was too great. We, um, basically sold the trophy to recoup our losses."

She stared at him for a moment before breaking out giggling. "Oh, my dad would just _love _that. And the second one?"

"You're going to laugh at me again," he said, smiling. "And it kind of has to do with what I'm going to tell everyone when we get back."

She leaned in a little closer. "Aw, come on. Give me a sneak peek?"

He blushed. "Fine, I guess. It was only kind of technically a win? I, uh, thought it was pretty stupid how hard everyone was fighting over it. The trophy was pretty valuable, after all, but I didn't think it was worth _that_ much. So, I… you know."

"No, Shirou, I don't know," she said amusedly.

"Well… while everyone was tired and distracted, I destroyed the trophy with a sword?"

Her giggles came back in force after another momentary pause born of shock. "Shirou, that definitely does _not _mean you won the tournament. That's not how winning works."

He blushed brighter. "It seemed like a good idea at the time! And, well, it ended the tournament, and I was the one who did it, so doesn't that count?"

She devolved into full-blown laughter, which didn't die down for almost a full minute. "Ha… I'm sorry," she gasped for breath. "I needed that. Really. I… I just might get rid of those stupid things after all. Thanks, Shirou."

"Anytime." He smiled. "Should we get back to the others?"

She stood up and offered him her hand, helping him to his feet as well. "I suppose so."

She went to the edge of the roof, reaching out once more with her Semblance, and drew to her the last pair of her weapons remaining from the campus grounds below, the originals.

They started to walk back towards the locker rooms. Pyrrha had one last question, though.

"Hey, you were joking when you said you were holding back, right? Your Semblance can't possibly be any stronger than that, right?"

He only laughed.

o-o-o-o-o

**Fun chapter to write. Hope you all enjoy! A couple fun little mythological references there, and a bit of free reign taken with Pyrrha's backstory. Should be pretty easy to tell who Patti and Pyrrha's dad are based off of, if you know who she herself was and you factor in that everybody from JNPR is gender-swapped. It's not like the show is really planning on developing her character any more… :'( so I feel like I can kind of do whatever I want with her past.  
**

**Please continue to read and review, and feel free to message me personally if you have any more direct questions, thoughts, or concerns! I love to hear from you all!**


	8. Chapter 8

Ruby and Weiss greeted their teammates as Shirou and Pyrrha returned from their spar, both smiling contentedly.

Ruby bounced up and down on her bed excitedly. "It was you, wasn't it? It had to be you!"

Shirou raised an eyebrow towards Weiss. The Schnee rolled her eyes with an amused smile. "The hundreds of copies of Pyrrha's weapons that rained past our window a little while ago. She hasn't stopped bouncing since then."

"Oh, yeah, that was us," Shirou said with an easy smile, causing their team leader to squeal happily.

"Eee! So cool! Why were there so many? Why'd they start raining? Is there a limit to how many you can make? Can you make it rain Crescent Rose?!"

Shirou laughed. "Pyrrha, mind fielding some of those for me? I could really use a shower."

"Of course," she said, smiling. "To the victor go the spoils of the first shower, after all."

Weiss' eyes widened slightly. "Shirou… beat you? I mean, I know that he's something else, but you're… well, you're Pyrrha Nikos!"

Shirou laughed again. "Only technically. She had me dead to rights at the end, but she broke the rules we laid out beforehand to do so. I said we should call it a draw, but she insisted she was the loser," he said as he turned his back on them and peeled off his shirt, tossing it into the laundry hamper and beginning to look through his closet for a replacement.

Normally, he would have been oblivious to the way all three of his teammates' eyes snapped to his leanly muscled torso as he began to disrobe, but this time he was notified to their attention by a small gasp from Pyrrha. He turned around again to find she was staring at him in concern, her expression mirrored by both of their teammates. "Something wrong?" he asked.

Pyrrha fought her eyes' natural urge to flicker down to his abs, keeping her focus on his arms. "Shirou, you're bleeding!"

He looked down at himself, appraising his condition. Sure enough, several long but shallow cuts were traced into his arms, and a few were present on his torso as well. A few were slowly seeping blood, but none of them were serious, and they all appeared to be healing well enough. "Well, yeah. You hit me with dozens of swords at once, Pyrrha," he said with a light chuckle. "At least some of them were bound to get past my armor – it doesn't cover everything."

"I'm so sorry!" She looked horrified. "I- I didn't know your Aura was so low, or I never would have – oh, no, I'm so, so, sorry, I didn't mean to–"

"Hey, wait!" he did his best to cut her off. "It's not your fault. My Aura was fine – still around fifty percent, even after you hit me. Besides, none of them are very bad," he said, raising one arm and inspecting it once again, looking for any abnormal ones that might be causing her undue concern.

"But… if you still had Aura, then how…?" Ruby asked softly.

"Ah, so that's it," he mumbled under his breath. "Well… I already told Pyrrha that I had some stuff to tell you guys. I guess I'll add this to the list. Just… let me take a shower first, alright? Don't worry about me, though. I promise, none of them even hurt that bad, and I heal really fast, remember?" He finished selecting the rest of his clothes, and made for their bathroom after he received a somewhat hesitant nod of acceptance from Pyrrha.

The bathroom door clicked shut. "Well, that sounded slightly ominous," Weiss noted, looking questioningly at Pyrrha. "What does he mean by needing to tell us things?"

Pyrrha still looked slightly uncomfortable over the fact that she'd hurt her friend. "I… he told me he would tell us more about his home. That's all I know – I have no idea how that could relate to him… I don't even know what happened! Did he choose not to protect himself on purpose?"

"Maybe you hit him by surprise, and he didn't have time to put up his Aura?" Ruby asked hesitantly. "That used to happen to me sometimes back when I first started training."

"Well, let's just say I'm pretty sure he saw my attack coming well in advance," Pyrrha answered. "There's no way he could have missed it, and he was definitely moving like he had his Aura active – plus, his arm was glowing like it does when he uses his Semblance."

Ruby frowned, unable to think of another theory.

"Well, we _could_ just wait for him to tell us himself," Weiss pointed out. "But, while we wait for that… how was it?" she asked, unable to completely hide the curiosity in her eyes.

Ruby nodded as well. "Yeah! Tell us all about it!"

Pyrrha smiled despite herself. "It was amazing. He's the best fighter I've ever faced."

Ruby's eyes gleamed. "Details, sister! Now!"

"Well, to start out, he attacked me with copies of six different students' weapons, so quickly that it was almost simultaneous, and using each of them as though he'd practiced with them his whole life. It was like I was actually fighting six people at once, except arguably worse, because in a real group fight I would have been able to use my opponents against each other. And just when I thought I'd barely weathered his onslaught, he hit me with an unexpected elbow that felt like a truck."

Ruby's mouth fell open in awe, and Weiss winced in sympathy.

"I even had to resort to using my Semblance to avoid an even worse situation. By the way… I'm sorry. I already knew all of your Semblances, and still, I kept mine a secret… but, we're teammates, and you deserve to know." She smiled shyly, raised a hand, and a nearby pen from her desk shot to her hand. With a wave of her fingers, it began to levitate and spin over her palm. "I can control ferrous objects."

Weiss' eyebrows rose. She was quite happy with her Glyphs, of course, but the edge that such a Semblance would offer against nearly every opponent, nearly all of whom used steel weapons and armor… Ruby merely cooed in excitement.

"And then he found a way to use that against me as well," Pyrrha continued. "He started making copies of my own weapons, and using my own style against me. The copies were so perfect that they confused my Semblance… he had me on the ropes, for sure. And to answer your question, Ruby, there didn't seem to be a limit to how many he could create. I've never been pushed so hard in a fight. And then… he basically let me win. He gave me advice mid-combat, and let me use all the copies of my weapons he'd made against him. And… apparently, he let me hurt him to do so."

"But… he said he won, on a technicality?" Ruby asked, confused.

"I knocked him off the roof," Pyrrha said sheepishly. "Which he explicitly told me not to do before we started. That's when all the weapons fell off as well, I suppose. But, I'm confident he could have beaten me easily if he was really trying. It was like the whole point of the spar was just to help me get stronger… and I think it's already working."

Weiss nodded. "He's a good teacher, isn't he? I felt the same way after combat class. Like, he was treating our fights seriously, but only in the context of training. Not like he was trying to win, but like he was trying to push me up against my limits, and then help me break through that wall."

Ruby pouted. "No fair! I want Shirou to push me against a wall too!" she exclaimed.

o-o-o-o-o

In a neighboring room, a sensitive pair of Faunus ears picked up a rather suggestive plaintive cry through the walls. A black bow twitched, the hidden ears beneath adjusting themselves to better focus on the source of the sound, just in time to hear another female voice declaring that 'she was sure Shirou would, if only Ruby asked him to,' and then a third voice wholeheartedly agreeing.

Blake blushed furiously, burying her face further in her book to hide that fact from her teammates.

RESN might have fooled everyone else, but they couldn't trick her! All the innuendoes… they were obvious. _Too _obvious. So obvious, in fact, that they _couldn't _be accurate depictions of what was actually happening. You'd have to be a fool to seriously believe it at face value – no offense to her partner.

Which made it the perfect code. The truth, hidden in plain sight.

Oh, she'd seen the way they all looked at him. Seen the afterglow on Ruby's cheeks at that breakfast, seen Weiss pinned under him in the throes of passion during class, seen Pyrrha returning to their room just now, still flushed and breathing heavy with exertion – as if anyone in their class would be able to put up a fight against the Invincible Girl! No, something was fishy here, and not in the good way, like that salmon he'd made her with the delicious, exotic tasting sauce...

She caught herself salivating, and forced herself to stop. That man… how could he be so forward! Even in her books, the protagonists never worked this fast, or this effectively! To have ensnared his entire team in under a week – just who was this Emiya Shirou?!

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou stepped out of the bathroom, feeling refreshed, and was pleased to see that his teammates no longer looked as concerned as they had before. They did, however, seem expectant.

"So," he said as he sat down on his bottom bunk, "Pyrrha mentioned to me that you all wanted to know more about my past?"

He looked to Weiss and Ruby, who both nodded firmly. He sighed. "It's kind of a hard story to tell, because I don't know how you all will react to it. Some parts of it are kind of sad, and some are weird…" He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts before nodding to himself resolutely. "Fine. Just, before I start, I want you guys to know that I'm not unhappy being here with all of you. No matter how tragic certain things may sound, just know that I'm fine, alright? I don't want you to look at me with pity, or sadness, okay?"

Ruby let out a small, nervous laugh. "Shirou, you're kind of scaring me…"

"Sorry," he said, but smiled. "But that's kind of what I mean. Are you sure you want to hear it?"

Ruby hesitated for only a split second before nodding again.

Weiss offered him a slightly sad smile of her own. "We all have our own pasts, Shirou, and our own issues. We won't think any less of you for sharing them with us."

Shirou faintly smiled back. "If you're all sure. And… I'm sorry in advance. There are some things I've kind of hid from you, or things that I've just let you assume without correcting you, but this should set some of that straight… I guess I'll start at the beginning, then."

He leaned back a bit, trying to get comfortable, as he began. "Okay, so like I told you before, I was rescued from a terrible fire when I was younger by a man named Kiritsugu. I was the only survivor that I know of, and around five hundred people died.

He took in the looks on the girls' faces and sighed again. "See? This is what I mean! We've been over this part already and you still all look sad." He frowned and crossed his arms. "I don't really have anything to be sad over, because I can't remember anything before that, and I was saved by a really great guy. He was… a retired Huntsman, of a sort, and he had always wanted to be a hero. He's the one who inspired me to take up that dream myself."

Their expressions softened as he explained the circumstances of his rescue.

"Aww, that's so sweet!" Pyrrha exclaimed softly.

"Yeah, he died around five years ago," Shirou bluntly continued. Their faces fell again.

"Seriously, people?" he said with another sigh. "I told you, I'm fine! He lived a good life, having saved a lot of people, and died peacefully, with the people who loved him, due to complications from the old wound that caused him to retire in the first place, knowing that I would still be around to carry on his dream in his stead."

He took a fortifying breath. "Okay, so now that the context is out of the way… I guess it's time to get into the hard stuff."

"That was the easy part?!" Weiss blurted out.

"Yeah…" he rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "So, I told you all that there was a battle, and that Fuyuki was destroyed as a result. I kind of just let you all assume that it was against the Grimm, but… that was a little misleading. It was a battle between people. A tournament, of sorts. I was a competitor."

Pyrrha gasped as she realized the connection to what he'd told her on the rooftop.

"To summarize… there was an event in Fuyuki that happened every so often, a secret tournament with a really powerful relic as the prize. It was such a valuable prize that a lot of really strong people came to fight for it… and things usually got _way_ out of hand. It was actually the previous tournament, I learned later, that caused the fire that orphaned me."

"And… you decided to compete, in the next one, even after what had happened to you?" Pyrrha asked slowly, sounding confused and sad.

"Well, not exactly," he continued. "I didn't even know it was happening, at first. I just kind of got dragged into it when one of the other competitors stabbed me through the heart because I saw him fighting someone and he didn't want any witnesses."

That drew another round of startled gasps from his audience.

"I got better, though! And after the whole misunderstanding got cleared up, I learned he wasn't that bad of a guy! I had him over to my house for dinner a couple weeks later."

The girls stared at him incredulously. Taking their silence as encouragement, he continued.

"So, basically, because the tournament kind of had a history of getting out of control, we all agreed to tone it down a little, try and solve things a little less violently. It worked for a while, I guess, but when you have that many strong people around, all competing for one prize, with tensions running high… well, it all fell apart, and most of Fuyuki got destroyed, again. Luckily, the people evacuated first this time. In fact, I only saw one guy die, the one I mentioned the other day, and he was one of the strongest competitors – his, uh, Semblance was that you had to kill him twelve times before he stayed dead for real, so I'm sure he got better soon after I left."

"Shirou, this is starting to sound like a very different story to what you originally implied," Pyrrha said slightly drily. "So, the other day, when you said you confronted the thing that had started the battle in the first place, but that it wasn't enough…"

"Yeah," he said, laughing sheepishly. "That's when I destroyed the prize everyone was fighting over while all the other competitors were exhausted."

Weiss slapped her palm over her face.

"I guess some people were probably pretty mad about that… but it was better than letting the fighting continue. More people might have gotten hurt!"

"And then they shoved you in a ship that blasted you all the way to Vale?" Pyrrha said with one eyebrow raised. "Like, they exiled you because of what you'd done?"

"Hmm… sure, yeah, that's basically right," he said. He figured mentioning the army of cat-women would be too weird.

"And the people there… your friends… you don't have any interest in trying to get back to them?" Pyrrha probed.

"Well, they're probably still mad at me…" he laughed nervously once more. "Most of them were involved with the competition somehow, and some of them really wanted to win. Plus, I have no idea how to get back, even if I wanted to. If you showed me a map of Remnant, I wouldn't even be able to point out the general location of Fuyuki. I think… the best shot I have of seeing them again is to let them find me, eventually."

"Hmm. You must have been incredibly isolated from the rest of Remnant, then," Weiss mused.

"Yeah, you could say that," he answered. The half-lies still kind of stung to tell, but it wasn't exactly as if he could just tell the complete truth either.

"So…" Ruby chimed in for the first time in a while. "What does all that have to do with how you got all cut up fighting Pyrrha?"

He nodded. "Oh, right, I forgot. Okay, so, I was never really any good at the theory behind all this stuff – but basically, it all comes back to how isolated Fuyuki was."

He paused for a moment to try and figure out how best to explain magecraft. "So. Imagine, I guess, that your body is like a cup, and your Aura is like water. When you awaken your Aura, it just naturally fills the cup, taking the shape of your body, right? It's an easy, natural, comforting process, to have your soul surround you like that, already perfectly shaped to fit you like a glove."

He let them come to grips with the metaphor he was using, and continued once they had all nodded in agreement that his assessment of Aura was fair. "But that's not all you can do with Aura, right? You can push it into your weapons and armor, which is how they're able to survive all the punishment we put them through. Like, if two Aura users were to clash a pair of normal swords together without having infused the weapons with their Aura, the swords would just break, unable to keep up with the strength of their wielders."

Another round of nods was sent his way. "Okay. So, back to the first part. The people where I'm from never figured out unlocking Aura the way the rest of Remnant did."

"What?!" Weiss exclaimed. "What do you mean?"

Ruby and Pyrrha looked just as confused. "That doesn't make any sense," Pyrrha said. "We've all seen you do things that can only be explained through Aura."

"...The way we did?" Ruby asked, picking out the important part of his statement. "You mean… they have a different way to unlock Aura?"

Shirou nodded. "That's right. The basic difference is, as far as I understand it, that _your _Aura floods through your whole body, protects all that it encompasses, and feels great to use. The way I had my Aura unlocked, and the way I use it… it's like there are a series of deep channels cut or carved directly into my soul, along which my Aura flows. It doesn't seep out to cover my body, it just flows along those pathways, and using it feels like liquid fire flowing through my veins."

"That's… that's terrible!" Ruby looked at him like he was a puppy that she'd just learned was kicked every day.

"I'm used to it," he shrugged. "But anyways, that's why I still got hurt even though I had Aura left. I Reinforce my entire body the same way you all use Aura to strengthen weapons and armor, so I'm a lot more durable than a normal person, but not invincible like you all are until your Aura runs out. I think my way might be more cost effective in terms of Aura usage, though."

"But… even if you were at full capacity, if you were struck by a hard enough blow somewhere vital…" Pyrrha's face was pale.

"Yeah, that would be bad. There's a reason I prefer heavier armor," he said with a lighthearted laugh.

"Shirou, this isn't a laughing matter!" Pyrrha practically shouted at him. "I could have killed you!"

"You should have told us this before," Ruby said quietly. "None of us want you to get hurt. Especially by one of us."

How could he remain flippant when faced with those sad silver eyes, or those terrified emerald ones? He sighed, his smile fading. "You're right, both of you. I'm sorry. But please, as your teammate, can I ask you to trust that I'll be fine? You've seen me in action. You know I can take care of myself, and if you all try to hold back when training with me, you won't be able to improve."

Ruby and Pyrrha seemed conflicted, but Weiss spoke up in his defense. "Well, I, for one, am pretty sure I couldn't hurt you even if I tried," she said as she leaned back against the wall with her arms crossed.

Shirou's smile returned faintly. "I don't mean to brag… but I'm not weak. Just because I don't do things the same way as you doesn't mean my own method is inferior. Besides, my way tends to result in extremely versatile Semblances compared to most of those I've seen so far here, so I have it to thank for my abilities."

Pyrrha nodded slowly. "I… suppose I can't argue with that, after what I've seen. Still, this is a lot to take in."

He nodded. "I know. Sorry, I know it all must seem pretty strange to you, but to me it was just always normal. I was really surprised when I came here and learned about how differently Aura was used to what I'm used to."

"Do the professors know about all this?" Weiss asked him.

"No, they don't. You all are the only ones that I've felt comfortable telling the whole story to," he answered honestly, which won him a few warm smiles.

"Thank you, Shirou," Pyrrha said. "I can't say I expected this when I asked you to tell us about your past, but… I'm glad you trust us enough to be able to share this."

"Of course," he said, smiling widely. "You're my teammates, after all. And Ruby's right – this is all stuff you should know, if it might affect how we work as a team."

Ruby smiled and nodded. "And we trust you too! If you say you'll be fine, then I believe you. But be careful, okay? No more jumping in front of fireballs."

Pyrrha and Weiss turned to look at him accusingly. "No more _what?_" Weiss asked.

"Oh, did I never tell you guys how Shirou and I first met?" Ruby laughed.

Shirou groaned. This… was probably _not _going to make his claim that he'd be fine more credible.

o-o-o-o-o

"Well, Sis? Spill the beans!" Yang demanded the next morning, sitting next to Ruby on her bed in Team RVBY's otherwise empty room.

"Spill _what _beans?!" Ruby asked exasperatedly. "I don't even know what's going on! As soon as breakfast was over, you just grabbed my arm and dragged me here without saying anything!"

It had been more of a brunch, really, because everybody had wanted to sleep in. It had been delicious, though – it was late enough in the day already that Ren, normally not a morning person, had agreed to help out by making the pancakes, much to Nora's delight. It might not have been a ton of help, but it was enough to let Shirou fully devote himself to the rest of the meal, which was even more spectacular than normal as a result. He'd also mentioned to RVBY that his team had pressured him into making them something special as a 'Fireball Apology meal,' whatever that meant, but if it meant more brunches like that, Yang was all for more fireballs.

"The beans about _Shirou,_ obviously! You've been living in the same room as him for a week now, and we've barely had any time alone, and I need to know what's going on in my little sister's life!"

"Heh, uh, ok," Ruby chuckled, "but I still don't know which… beans… you want. Can you be more specific?"

"Well, how's he look without his clothes, for one?" Yang asked with a suggestive smile.

"_Yang!"_

The blonde leaned in close to her sister's face, seemingly investigating every detail of the bright blush Ruby wore. "Hmm, yes, I see. So, you _have _seen his body, and you liked what you saw!"

Ruby made a non-verbal squeak and grew even brighter.

"Hmm. And all that innuendo earlier – that's all it was, right? He really hasn't tried to do anything to you?" she asked with a scowl.

"Yang, seriously!" Ruby complained. "I can't even tell whether you want me t-to…_ get together_ with him, or to try and protect me from him!"

"Argh! I know!" Yang ran her hands through her thick golden hair. "I don't know either! It's like my brain can't make up its mind!"

Ruby giggled.

"On the one hand, he's handsome, muscular, one of the most skilled fighters in our class, polite, cooks the best food I've ever had, and he saved your life…" Yang mused out loud. "And on the other… you're my baby sister and no boy is allowed to lay a hand on you!"

The smaller girl laughed again. "Well gee, Yang, when you put it like that, it's really hard to tell which argument has more merit," she said in a sarcastic tone that flew right over her sister's head.

"I know! It's so hard to decide!" Yang lamented.

"B-besides, who even said I liked him that way, anyways?" Ruby asked, blushing a little and averting her eyes.

Yang took one look back at her and sighed. "Oh, Sis, you poor thing. Your face tells me more than your words ever could," she said as she nodded sagaciously.

"W-what is that supposed to mean?!" Ruby asked, startled.

"Well, let's just say those cute little cheeks of yours aren't very good at keeping secrets," Yang answered as she reached over and gave one of them a soft pinch.

"Am I really that obvious?" Ruby asked in terror. "You don't think he… I mean, nobody's said anything to me, besides you…"

"Relax, Ruby. I know his type," Yang said, waving one hand dismissively. "Guys like him are as oblivious as rocks. You'd have to literally throw yourself at him before he got a hint. _I, _however, am as perceptive as a hawk! You can't hide anything from me!"

"Yang, you thought we had wild four-way sex on our first night in the dorms together!"

Yang gasped. "Where did my adorable innocent sister learn about such forbidden topics?!"

"I'm fifteen, not five," Ruby growled. "And don't change the subject!"

"Well, okay, I maybe made one little mistake. But in my defense, the way you guys were talking was _really_ easy to misinterpret. If I didn't think you all incapable of such a thing, I'd even assume you were messing with me on purpose! But just because I was wrong once doesn't mean I'm wrong about this, now am I?"

Ruby reluctantly shook her head a little, still blushing furiously. "I mean, there's all that stuff you mentioned earlier," she started hesitantly. "And he likes weapons, too, and he _makes _weapons, and that has to be the coolest Semblance ever. And… he's supportive of me being team leader, and he helped me get along with Weiss better. He doesn't look down on me for being younger than everyone else, or for not being as good as everyone else on our team. And his smile is really nice…" Her voice kind of trailed off before she raised it once more. "So… maybe. Maybe, a little tiny bit, you're not _completely_ wrong."

Yang smiled. "There, that wasn't so hard to admit, was it? Now, all you have to do is go admit that same thing to him!"

"_What?!" _Ruby squawked, almost physically jumping off the bed. "No! No way, are you crazy?!"

"Nope! Didn't I just say if you wanted him to notice how you feel, you'd have to be super blunt and just tell him?"

"B-but… I can't!"

"Hey, I'm just trying to look out for my little sis here, you know? I mean, you've got some pretty stiff competition," she said nonchalantly, inspecting the nails on the back of one hand.

"C-competition?" Ruby froze. "What do you mean?"

Yang looked back at her with a knowing smile, tapping one finger against her temple. "Super-big-sister-perception, remember? You might have it bad for him, but if you don't act quick, one of your other teammates might snatch him up!"

"Weiss and Pyrrha?" Ruby's eyes went wide.

Yang nodded. "Yup. You should have seen Pyrrha during initiation – she made a beeline right for him. If I'm reading her right, she's as shy as you are, but the girl knows what she wants, and she's not afraid to try and get it. Your saving grace there is that she's not going to be blunt either, at least at first, but she's going to try and set things up as favorably as possible for her.

"And as for Weiss Cream… I mean, Shirou's like a super-butler, and rich people love butlers! He cooks, he cleans, he fights, and to top things off, he's young and hot! Assuming he's not from a dirt-poor family, which I somehow doubt, he seems like the kind of guy Papa Schnee would be more than happy about having as a son-in-law – competent, but not ambitious, the perfect partner to support his little heiress without trying to take control of the company. Plus, you saw how they were all over each other in combat class the other day, right?

Ruby's posture slumped lower and lower the more Yang spoke. "I can't compete with them…" she mumbled dejectedly. "They're both so strong, and beautiful, and famous…"

"That's _not _the spirit!" Yang exclaimed in fake joviality, leaning over and ruffling her sister's hair. "Ruby, you've got as much of a shot as either of them! You're the first person his age he met in Vale, you're both weapons nuts, and he was willing to risk – no, to _sacrifice_ his life just to make sure you weren't hurt! _And_ you're adorable!"

Ruby blushed again. "You really think so?"

Yang smiled. "I _know _so."

Ruby looked away again, clearly still troubled. "But, I don't want Weiss or Pyrrha to be sad either. If they like him too…"

"Eh, their happiness isn't more important than yours, is it? I'm sure there's a way for you all to end up happy, anyways," Yang said dismissively as she flopped onto her back. "And hey, it's Saturday. If you want to get in on the game, you should try to spend some quality alone time with him today. And then provide me a full report on it later."

Ruby blinked. "But – I already have plans with Shirou for the day. In fact, we're going to be spending almost the whole day together."

Yang snapped back up to a sitting position in an instant. "You _what?"_

"W-well, Shirou doesn't really have any stuff, and I kind of ordered him to personalize his part of the room. So, we're gonna go into Vale and look around for some stuff, maybe hit some weapons stores. We needed to go anyways, because Shirou wanted to buy some ingredients for later, so we were just going to make a day of it. He promised to make me cookies! He said he already got permission from the cooks to use the kitchen later!"

Yang stared in silence for a moment at her sister incredulously. "Ruby, at what point when I was lecturing you on how you should address your feelings for him were you going to mention that you _already had set up a date_ with him? For _today?!_"

Ruby gasped. "A what?!"

"What do you mean 'a what?!'"

"A date?!" Her face was rapidly paling.

"Ruby, you're going to shop in the city all day, and then he's going to bring you back to a privately reserved room where he's going to make your favorite food, just for you?" Yang asked pointedly.

"Yes?" Ruby squeaked.

"_That's a date!"_

"Oh no! What do I do? I'm not prepared for a date! I thought dates were supposed to be at movie theaters and pizza places!" She started to panic.

"_Lame _dates are at movie theaters and pizza places! _Good _dates are at places you're both interested in and include private, romantic, delicious home-cooked meals!"

"Aaaaah!" Ruby screamed.

"_Aaaaah!" _Yang echoed her.

"Am I interrupting something?"

Shirou stood in their doorway sporting an amused grin.

"_NO!" _Ruby instinctively shouted in terror, just as Yang shouted "_YES!"_

The two girls looked at each other for a moment, startled, and then both snapped their gazes back to Shirou. "How much did you hear?!" they both demanded in sync.

Shirou laughed. "Nothing, just screaming. I tried to knock, but I guess you didn't hear me. I was looking for Ruby – are you ready to go?" he asked her.

"No!" She shouted again, naturally at the same time that Yang declared "Yes!" before shoving her little sister off the bed. Ruby tripped with an undignified squawk, and ended up on the floor staring up at Yang with a betrayed expression.

Shirou hurried forward and knelt beside her, helping her to her feet. "Is everything… alright in here?" he asked.

"No…" Ruby whimpered for a third time.

"We were just talking about how excited Ruby was for your day together!" Yang threw her under the bus.

"Oh. I'm excited too," Shirou said with a smile, which made Ruby let out a little squeak. "I've been looking forward to experimenting a little bit with my usual cookie recipe. I hope they turn out alright."

"Haha, oh, I'm sure they will, well, have fun you two!" Yang babbled as she tried to usher them out of the room.

"_Yang what are you doing I'm not ready!" _Ruby desperately protested in a volume just above a whisper.

Yang slammed the door, leaving Shirou and Ruby alone in the hallway.

"Um, that was… kind of weird," Shirou said, scratching his head confusedly.

"Dangit, Yang!" Ruby sighed, kicking her sister's door lightly. She took a deep breath to try to calm herself before turning back to Shirou and trying her best to smile up at him. It was only slightly shaky, which she thought meant she was doing pretty good. "Alright, I, uh, guess I am ready a-after all!"

o-o-o-o-o

Her nervousness had been quickly forgotten, luckily, and had almost completely dissipated by the time their Bullhead landed in Vale proper. After all, she _had_ been excited in the first place, and it wasn't like the plans had changed at all. As long as she mentally did her best to avoid the D-word, it wasn't actually that bad!

Even if they _had _been sitting really close to each other on the Bullhead, and every time there was a bit of turbulence, his leg and her knee had brushed together lightly, and great, now she was blushing again just remembering it.

They'd spent hours already touring around the various weapons shops in the city. They hadn't bought anything – after all, she was perfectly pleased with Crescent Rose, and he could just copy anything that caught his fancy later, but she had pointed out several of the cooler looking pieces that he promised to Project copies of and hang up in their room later.

For almost another hour, they'd simply sat on a bench together outside one of the most popular shops, people-watching the various Huntsmen and Huntresses that came to have their weapons serviced. It quickly became a game, where Shirou would point out a weapon and tell her how the owner used it and Ruby would do her best to brainstorm additional maneuvers that their owners had never thought of.

Finally, metaphorically glutted on weapons, they'd made their way to a grocery store.

"Alright, eggs, flour, butter, Choco-Chippies brand chocolate chips…" Ruby read off the list of ingredients Shirou had hastily penned down. "Brown sugar, white sugar, vanilla extract… baking soda, baking powder? Are cookies really made of this much stuff?" She asked incredulously.

Shirou walked beside her, pushing their shopping cart. He reached over to a nearby shelf and grabbed a box of baking soda as he laughed. "Good ones are, yes. You don't bake a lot, then?"

"Heh, no," she admitted, bashfully kicking one foot back and forth. "Not allowed to anymore, actually. Dad and Yang both banned me from trying."

"Really? Why is that?"

"Uh, well…" She blushed, tried to think of a way to phrase the story without it making her seem incompetent, realized that was impossible, sighed, and just went ahead and told it anyways.

"Well, let's just say that I thought the recipe was egg, flour, and chocolate chips. And that I don't know how to crack an egg. Or measure out flour. Or, umm, stir, apparently. And I would eat all the chocolate chips before I could add them to the mix…"

She blushed brighter as Shirou began to laugh – but it was a good-natured laugh, and she smiled as well. "Hey, I was a little kid, okay? I didn't know what I was doing! And, well, you only serve someone an egg-and-flour chocolate chip cookie with eggshells instead of chocolate chips once before you're not allowed to try again, ever. Especially when they go in the kitchen afterwards and it's completely covered in spilled flour, spilled milk, and broken glass."

She found herself giggling along, as Shirou's laughter only grew in intensity. "Please, stop, no more," he wheezed. "I can't take it!"

"Well, you'll just have to teach me the right way to make them, then!" She said happily. "And maybe someday I'll be able to redeem myself, and be allowed back in the kitchen!"

It took a few moments before Shirou was able to get himself back under control. "So, who does most of the cooking, then? Something tells me it's not Yang," he said after one last chuckle.

"Yeah, that'd be our dad, Tai." Her smile grew a little sad. "It used to be my mom, Summer, but he had to step up when… when she died."

"Oh, Ruby, I'm sorry…" He put a hand on her shoulder for support, which she leaned into gratefully.

"It's alright. It was a long time ago. I still miss her, but my dad is great. He did a good job."

He gave her a slight squeeze before letting go. "I was always the cook of my house," he said with a nostalgic smile of his own. "I had to be, or else Kiritsugu and I both would have starved."

"He wasn't married? Or, do you have siblings?" She asked, slightly hesitantly.

Shirou shook his head. "He was married, once. She died shortly before he adopted me, but from how he spoke about her sometimes, she was an amazing woman. They had a child together, actually, which makes me her adopted older brother. But when Irisviel died… well, she was kind of like Weiss, I guess, the heiress of a powerful family. Her family blamed her death on my dad, and they never let him see his daughter, Illya, again."

"Oh, no," Ruby breathed out sadly.

"I met her, though. Shortly before I came here. She was in the tournament too; her partner was the guy with the twelve lives. She's a really sweet girl, although I'll admit she has a little bit of a sadistic streak." He laughed a bit, but it came out a little weak. "She's probably mad at me for being sent away soon after we were reunited."

There was a moment of silence, before Shirou broke it with a small chuckle. "Hey, sorry. I'm killing the mood. Want to go find some ice cream to go with the cookies? I'll go grab some milk."

"Oh, good idea!" She nodded and dashed off, at least some amount of happiness restored at the promise of sugar.

She darted through the store, slightly enhanced by her Semblance as she made her way to the freezer section. There was already a girl there, one even smaller than Ruby, with the door to the ice cream open.

"Excuse me!" Ruby said brightly as she reached past the girl and grabbed a tub of vanilla before stepping back.

Startled, the girl – no, the small woman – turned sharply to face Ruby, a tub of ice cream held in each hand. She wore a stylish outfit of white, brown, and pink, which contrasted well with her pale skin and her hair, which was pink on one side and brown on the other. Her eyes were similarly heterochromatic.

She looked Ruby up and down appraisingly as she slowly lowered the ice cream into her shopping cart – which Ruby realized was already full to the brim with similar tubs.

The strange woman smirked and winked at her, and then with a sound like shattering glass, she and her cart seemed to crack apart into small fragments that quickly disappeared, eliciting a yelp from Ruby, and leaving no trace that she had ever been there, save for the severely ice-cream depleted freezer.

"Well, that was weird," Ruby mumbled to herself before darting back to find Shirou.

She found him near the milk, standing in the cereal aisle, staring down at an orange box.

"Hey, Shirou, you'll never guess what I just saw…" She paused as he looked up at her with possibly the most bemused expression she'd ever seen him wear.

"Yeah, me either." He gestured towards the walls of the aisle, lined with similar orange boxes, and Ruby turned to look at them.

She stared at them for a moment, her previous encounter completely forgotten in an instant, and then broke out into hysteric giggles.

A hundred smiling Pyrrhas stared back at her from a hundred bright orange boxes of Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow flakes.

"Did you know about this?" Shirou managed to get out, struggling to contain his own laughter.

"I did not!" Ruby continued to laugh. "But we're buying some, right?"

"Oh, of course. I'm _so _serving this to her for breakfast tomorrow."

His proposal set her off again, so hard that she had to sit down on the floor. The towering walls above her, covered in her teammate's happy face, were only funnier from that perspective.

He finally helped her up and led her out of the aisle a minute later, before people started to think they were crazy. "Come on, just one stop left," he said after paying for the ingredients with some of what was left of his stipend from Ozpin.

He carried their bags as he led her down familiar roads until they were standing outside 'From Dust Till Dawn' once more, now with intact front window, and took her to a section of the store she'd never really paid attention to before. Bags of Dust lined the shelves.

"Food grade?" Ruby asked as she picked one up. "You can eat Dust?"

"Yeah, I think so. I've been excited to try it ever since I saw these last time we were here." He picked up a bag, held it to his nose, and inhaled deeply, but replaced it on the shelf and picked up another one.

Ruby giggled again. "What are you doing?" She asked as he started to sniff another unopened bag.

"Trying to decide which one to get!" he answered, reaching for another bag after shaking his head.

"Why aren't you just, um, reading the labels, then? Can you even smell it without opening the bag? Does Dust even smell?" She asked, puzzled.

"Well, food-grade seems to cover a spectrum, still. Different potencies. I want to make sure I get the right one, but I'm not familiar enough with it yet to just use the numbers on the labels. And yeah, I can smell Dust, and Aura, even through stuff."

"Wait, what? You can smell Aura, too? How does that work?"

He shrugged. "Just something I've always been able to do."

"So…" She looked down, embarrassed. "Do I smell?"

"Of course," he answered easily. She was about to scowl at him, but he cut her off. "Like fresh air. Rose petals on the breeze."

"O-oh. Is that… good?" She asked uncertainly – hopefully.

He smiled down at her. "It's very nice." She smiled and looked away with a small blush as he continued. "This is the one I want, by the way. Ready to go back?"

She nodded happily. Time for cookies!

o-o-o-o-o

Ruby hopped up to sit on one of the tall stools surrounding the kitchen island as Shirou whirled around the room like it was his home.

It was like watching a professional dancer. He whipped out bowls, pans, and tools, pulling them from their cupboards and drawers without hesitation and placing them perfectly around the counter next to the ingredients they would be used with. There was no wasted motion, everything done perfectly efficiently. The oven was preheated, the ice cream was placed in the freezer and the milk in the fridge, and finally, coming to a halt, a burst of neon green shot down Shirou's arm momentarily, and a brown apron appeared over his clothes in a shimmer of blue light.

She was so entranced by the performance that it took her a moment to realize he'd asked her something. "Huh? What?"

"I asked if you wanted to help me make them. You'll remember the process better if you do it yourself, after all."

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow in shock, but her voice had a hint of hope as well. "Even after I warned you about what happened last time?"

Shirou shrugged and smiled at her again. "Of course. Like you said, you were just a kid, and I can help you with the tricky bits."

"Then yeah, of course! I'd love to!" She kicked her legs happily from where she sat on the stool. "Where do we start?"

There was another burst of blue light, and he tossed her a balled-up piece of fabric, which she caught easily – unfurling it to reveal a bright red apron, decorated with miniature black roses.

She put it on happily and tied it behind her back as he led her over to the first mixing bowl, surrounded by most of the dry ingredients and some measuring cups and spoons.

"Baking is all about careful measurements, so you have to be careful when you're pouring your ingredients. When you were younger, the flour probably went everywhere because it was clumped together in the bag, so you were too forceful when you tried to pour it out. Ours should be fine because it's a fresh bag, but otherwise you can knead the bag before you open it to get it loose."

Under his watchful eye, she poured out a cup of flour. "You don't want to pack it down in the cup, but you do want it level, so just gently shake it over the open bag until the excess is off – good, now two more of those."

"Huh, this isn't as hard as I remember it," she said, smiling as she poured the third cup into the bowl.

"See? I told you you could do it. Now, one teaspoon baking soda – no, that one's a tablespoon, you want the smaller one without the B – yeah, that one. And then a teaspoon of salt, and a half a teaspoon of the baking powder." She followed his instructions dutifully.

"Alright, that's good for now! Ready to try mixing something now?" he asked with another wide smile.

She nodded nervously. "Ok, but I'm just warning you, the spoon always gets stuck."

"Stuck to what?" he asked.

"Just stuck," she said, lifting both hands and shrugging. "I have no idea."

"I'm sure we'll be fine," he said with a laugh. "Alright, in this bowl, you're going to put two sticks of butter, and one cup of each of the two types of sugar."

She measured the sugar out carefully, pouring it on top of the butter, gulped, and gingerly inserted a wooden spoon into the mixture. To her surprise, it stirred through the ingredients easily. "Weird. I really wonder what I did wrong the first time now," she questioned as her arm continued to churn in circles.

Shirou put one hand to his chin. "Maybe your egg and flour mixture somehow dried out and glued the spoon to the bowl while you were eating all the chocolate chips?" he mused.

Ruby snorted in amusement, but he didn't miss the way that her eyes flickered longingly to the bag of Choco-Chippies.

"Hey, you'll enjoy them more when they're in the cookies, I promise." He peeked over her shoulder into the bowl. "Good! Now we need to add a couple of eggs."

Ruby froze. "Oh no," she whispered.

Shirou laughed as he pulled out a spare bowl from another cupboard. "If you're worried about it, why don't you practice in here? If you get it right, we can just pour it in from here, and if you don't… well, it's just an egg. We can wash it out and try again."

"Alright, if you're sure…" She gingerly picked an egg out of the carton and brought it to the practice bowl.

"Just a light tap on the rim of the bowl is all you need to get a small crack, and then it'll pull open easily enough."

She very, very gently lowered the egg just to the edge of the bowl, and lightly tapped it to the glass with a small *tink* noise.

"A little harder than that, though," Shirou laughed.

She blushed and tried again, just a tiny bit harder, and looked at the bottom of the egg. Still no crack. "Alright, no problem, I can just keep doing it a little harder every time until it works, right?" She half mumbled to herself, half asked Shirou.

He nodded, and leaned against the counter. "Sure, no rush."

Third try – no cracks. Fourth – no cracks. Fifth – nope.

Tenth try – still nothing. Shirou raised an eyebrow at her and smiled a little.

Eleventh – the egg exploded.

Ruby led out a loud shriek and stumbled away from the bowl, and Shirou had to rush forward and grab her before she fell back onto their other mixing bowls. "Whoa! You alright?"

"Ack! Stupid eggs!" Ruby sputtered back. "It was just a little bit stronger than the last one! What the heck!"

Shirou smiled, and gently spun her around after she was steadied. "Well, good news is, most of it landed on your apron, which is what it's for."

"Aww. I liked my apron," she pouted.

"You know I can just make you a fresh one whenever you want, right?" he asked, Projecting a small cloth in one hand and running it under the faucet for a moment. "Come here, though. Some got on your face."

She blushed as he leaned down slightly, and gently wiped her cheek with the soft, cool cloth. "Is there any in my hair?" she asked.

He straightened up a bit and took a half step closer, closely investigating her head for any spare egg. Her blush darkened. Wow, he was really close. "Nope! You're good," he proclaimed, stepping back and turning to wash out the practice bowl and wipe down the countertops in smooth, practiced motions. When he was done, he tossed the cloth into the sink and then dissipated it, allowing the mess it had picked up to fall off the Projection and down the drain.

"Alright, ready to try again?" he asked as he turned back to her.

Her eyes shot open wide and she rapidly shook her head from side to side. "I don't think that's a good idea…" she protested, but it only prompted another laugh from Shirou.

"Come on, here, I'll help you." He guided her back to the bowl, and took up a position behind her as she shakily reached for a second egg. Once she had it in hand, he reached over her shoulder and cupped the top of her right hand in his own.

As his skin touched hers, she gave a slight jerk. "What–" she started to say. Okay, wow. Now he was _really_ really close. And wow. His hand was so warm, and firm–

"Just relax. I'll guide you through the motions, and you can just concentrate on feeling what I'm doing, ok?" His soothing voice was so close to her ear.

She took a calming breath and nodded, doing her best to relax, which was harder than it sounded when he was standing close enough behind her that she could feel his body heat against her back. Still, she managed to let him take complete control of her arm.

He raised and lowered her arm in one smooth motion, gently cracking the egg against the rim of the bowl. Then he did _something_ with his hand, flexing his palm and his fingers in such a way that her own hand somehow pulled both halves of the egg apart, the interior of the egg neatly sliding out from between the crack and into the waiting bowl.

In the next instant, he was gone, having released her and taken a step back. Her skin raised slightly in goosebumps in the sudden absence of the comforting warmth of his hand. "See? It's that easy," he said. "Do you want to try the next one on your own?"

"N-no," she stuttered out immediately, and then her cheeks immediately lit up bright red as she realized what she was saying. She carefully tried to look anywhere but at his face as her traitorous mouth continued to speak. "C-can you help me again?" Oh, she was just hopeless, wasn't she? Yang was right. Her face couldn't keep a secret if her life depended on it.

"Hey, there's no need to be embarrassed about it. You'll get it eventually, with practice. Of course I'll help again," he said with another of his wonderfully bright and happy smiles.

It was at that moment that she realized Yang was _really_ right. Not just about her – but about Shirou as well. He was dense – oblivious. No matter how much she blushed, or stammered, or reacted inappropriately to his perfectly innocent desire to help her make a simple batch of cookies, he just didn't_, wouldn't _realize how she felt.

It was the most liberating thought she'd had all day.

So, if, when he took up his position behind her once more, holding her clumsy hand in his dexterous one, she melted just a little bit more into his grip? If she let out a quiet sigh of contentment? Nobody noticed. Most of nobody because they weren't there to witness it, and the rest of nobody – one Emiya Shirou – because he was, in the words of Yang, as oblivious as a rock. So… she might as well enjoy the moment, right?

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou noticed how Ruby reacted differently the second time he took her hand in his.

She leaned back into him, just ever so slightly more than she had before. Her breath caught, but it was somehow different than the flinch she'd had the first time – more accepting, perhaps, slightly happier.

As he helped her crack the second egg into the bowl, his hand lingered slightly longer than it had before on her smooth wrist, and it was only an instance of mind over matter that stopped him from placing his left hand over her hip and drawing her closer against him.

Weird. Why did everything suddenly feel so intimate? Why was he suddenly having flashbacks to all the time he'd spent in the kitchen with Sakura?

Phew. Good thing he was so mentally disciplined, or else he might have accidentally made things awkward with Ruby, and he was sure neither of them wanted that.

o-o-o-o-o

She turned to face him as he once more released her hand, silver eyes meeting amber. And… was it just her imagination, or did his cheeks bear a faint blush as well?

"Alright," he said with a light cough, stepping further away from her. "Now we basically just add the eggs, two teaspoons of the vanilla, and all the stuff from the first bowl to the second one, mixing the whole time. Want to stir, or add ingredients?"

"I suppose you can have a turn at stirring," she said, still smiling at the memory of his touch, and even more at the fact he was smiling right back at her.

He nodded his agreement, took up the bowl, and began to stir it again. She had the easy job, now, just slowly pouring in one ingredient after another, leaving her free to blatantly ogle the way the muscles in his arms strained against the thin fabric of his shirt as his arm churned away steadily like a piston.

It wasn't like he would notice, after all. Man, dense boys really just were the best, weren't they? She was going to give Yang _such _a big hug later for figuring this out.

o-o-o-o-o

Was Ruby staring at him a lot more intently than normal? It really seemed like she was kind of… ogling, he supposed would be the best word, his arms.

Well, that was nearly everything. "Alright, just two teaspoons of the Dust now, and we should be nearly ready," he said. Ruby carefully measured it out and added it to the bowl, and he stirred it in. Perfect.

o-o-o-o-o

"Almost done. Now you can pour in all the chocolate chips!"

Her eyes lit up in excitement as she dashed over to the purple bag that had been just sitting there enticingly. It was finally time for her favorite ingredient!

She tore open the bag and inhaled deeply of the chocolatey scent that had lain hidden within. Oh, yeah. That was the stuff.

In fact, what if she… just a taste wouldn't hurt. Just one chocolate chip – there were so many, after all.

She slowly reached her hand into the bag.

"Ruby…" Shirou said slowly, watching the offending arm creep forward. She paused and looked at him like a deer in headlights. "What are you doing?"

She didn't answer, but her arm began to move once more as her eyes remained locked with his. It withdrew from the bag, holding a single piece of chocolate.

"Ruby, no!"

She popped it into her mouth.

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou immediately knew that any semblance of control he had over the situation, or Ruby, evaporated in that instant.

He had to act fast. He was already dashing forward as her eyes glazed over and her arm blurred down again, plunging into the bag, and coming back out holding not one chocolate chip, but a handful.

He was lucky that her first instinct was to eat more of the chocolate, and only her second to escape. He had the full amount of time that it took her to grab three handfuls and shovel them into her mouth to try and reach her – so basically, less than a second.

He only barely managed it, clamping a hand down on each wrist just as she started to turn to dart away – after which, no doubt, he wouldn't have seen her again until the bag was empty and she came back to her senses.

Luckily, his grab seemed to do the trick as well. Her right hand jerked a few more times, as if it didn't understand why it wasn't still fulfilling its purpose as a chocolate delivery mechanism, as sanity slowly returned to Ruby's eyes.

"Oopsh," she mumbled through a mouth stuffed with chocolate chips, cheeks bulging like a chipmunk. "Couldn' conrol m'shelf," she clarified, looking up at him sheepishly.

Shirou laughed as he let go of her, plucking the bag away from her with one hand. With the other, he reached over and ruffled her hair while she struggled to chew and swallow. "Well, I guess we're lucky I half expected this. Don't worry, we still have more than enough."

Ruby gulped, forcing the huge mass of chocolate down with a contented sigh. "No such thing as more than enough!" she proclaimed.

"I know, I know," he said, upending the rest of the bag into the bowl and continuing to stir. "There, extra chocolatey."

He began to roll out balls of the dough and chocolate mixture, placing them onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and gesturing her over, where she began to help.

Soon enough, they had a full sheet of them, and Shirou smoothly slid it into the oven.

"And now we wait!" he declared, moving over to the fridge.

"How long?" Ruby asked excitedly. "And what are you doing?"

He pulled the milk out, and swapped it with the ice cream in the freezer. "Only around ten minutes. And we want the milk as cold as possible, and the ice cream soft enough to scoop and eat. They won't melt or freeze before the cookies are done, but they'll be a little closer to how we want them."

"Wow. You think of everything, don't you?"

Shirou shrugged and smiled at her. "I just like to make good food. It's one of the easiest ways to make people happy."

Ruby smiled back and hopped back up on her stool. "So, what do you want to do while we wait?"

He moved up and took a seat beside her on a neighboring stool, facing the oven. "Well, I was kind of hoping you'd tell me a little more about yourself?"

o-o-o-o-o

Ruby felt the telltale signs of heat rising to her cheeks again. He wanted to know more about her?

"I mean," he continued, "I've told you all a lot about my own circumstances, I think, which makes sense. I am the mysterious foreigner with the strange Semblance, after all, right? But I haven't heard too much about your side of things, or anyone else's. I know more about your weapons than I do you."

He looked a little embarrassed to be asking. It was kind of cute. She smiled again. "What kind of stuff do you want to know?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Your family, your life? You're my teammate, Ruby. I'd love to hear anything you have to tell me."

"Well, okay," she said, equal parts shy and happy. "We live on an island called Patch…"

She told him about her family, about how she and Yang shared a dad but not a mom. She told him how one day Summer had gone off on a mission and never returned. About Signal, about forging Crescent Rose after being trained how to use a scythe by her uncle, Qrow.

He was a really good listener, she realized eventually. He was comforting and sympathetic when she needed it, he smiled and laughed at all the right places, and he knew just what questions to ask when she wasn't sure where to proceed.

The cookies were ready before she knew it.

Shirou slid the sheet from the oven and placed it onto a trivet to cool.

They smelled _amazing. _Ruby sneakily tried to snatch one, but he noticed and slapped her hand away gently. "Not yet! They need to set first. And besides, you'd burn your fingers, not to mention your mouth. Go get a bowl of ice cream ready instead."

She pouted, but did as instructed, doling out two large helpings and pouring two glasses of ice-cold milk. She turned around to see Shirou lightly sprinkling the cooling cookies with another pinch of the red Dust he'd bought.

She sat at the island, smiling excitedly as Shirou gently poked one of the cookies appraisingly.

"Now?" she asked.

He turned around and nodded with a smirk. "Now," he said. He used a spatula to free all the cookies from their baking sheet, arranging them deftly and artfully on a fresh plate and then placing the plate within easy reach of her bowl.

She reached over and carefully plucked the top one from the pile. Its warm and gooey goodness called to her, but she took a moment to examine the way the Dust sprinkling the top of the cookie made it sparkle with a red tint in the light. So pretty!

She couldn't wait any longer. She took a bite.

For a moment – she wasn't sure how long – she was frozen. Flavor exploded in her mouth. The cookie was perfectly fluffy and moist, the chocolate chips had just the hint of a firm outer covering but were melted in the center. There were hints of vanilla, and of cinnamon – the dust, maybe, which made her mouth tingle delightfully, and sent a wave of warmth spreading through her whole body.

It was so familiar.

_She knew this taste._

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou forwent taking a cookie of his own, at first, in lieu of watching Ruby try hers. He wore an expectant smile – this was always the best part of making food: watching the people you made it for take the first bite.

As she bit into the cookie, her eyes widened slightly, and then she went completely still, staring down at the treat in her hand. Her only movement was her chewing, almost mechanical in nature.

She swallowed, and went for another bite, slowly savoring it as well. It was strange, almost, how much it contrasted to what he normally saw of her – she was generally the type to scarf down cookies as fast as possible. This one, though, she ate methodically, in complete silence, and complete focus.

It was only by the time that she finished the first cookie and reached for a second one, still completely ignoring her ice cream and milk, that he noticed the tears starting to pool in her eyes.

"Ruby? What's wrong?" he asked in sudden concern. "Ruby?"

She started a bit, and turned to face him, just as the first tear reached critical mass and rolled down her cheek. "They're amazing," she said, hiccuping slightly as it was matched by another one streaking down her opposite cheek. She took a large bite of the second cookie.

He stood up and stepped closer, hesitantly reaching out a hand to her shoulder. "Then… what's wrong?"

She hiccuped again, swallowed, and shoved the entire rest of the cookie into her mouth, before she suddenly leapt from her seat and crashed into him. He stood there, unsure of what to do, as she wrapped her arms tightly around him. He could feel muffled chewing and sniffling against his chest, and he slowly wrapped his arms around her as well and pulled her deeper into the desperate hug.

"Hey, Ruby, come on, talk to me," he gently pleaded with her, rubbing her back with one hand and stroking her hair with the other.

He felt her swallow. "This is my mom's secret recipe," she whispered into his chest, squeezing him tighter. She was quiet for a moment before continuing. "I haven't tasted it since I was four, but I never forgot it. She never told anyone how to make them before..." Her voice trailed off.

She started to move, so he tried to let go, but she only tightened her grip in response and he replaced his hands. Instead, she seemed to be trying to spin them around, and push them back towards the island. He couldn't help but laugh when he realized what she was going for, and he helped her maneuver over to a position where she could quickly use one arm to snatch another cookie.

"Thank you," she whispered before starting to munch on the cookie, still pressed against him, and no doubt smearing crumbs, Dust and chocolate all over his apron.

Oh well. That's what aprons were for, after all.

o-o-o-o-o

**Thanks for reading! Not as much action this time, some more exposition, but a little longer to make up for that. Hope you all enjoy! As always, please review or message me!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Interlude Chapter**

"Rapier wasps?!" Cardin Winchester fumed. "Gah!" He let out an angry shout and heavily kicked the whiteboard that stood in the center of Team CRDL's dorm. It flew back and impacted the wall, barely missing Russel as he dodged out of the way.

The board was covered in what could only be described as an 'elaborate scheme.' The basic premise of the plan was that somehow, the night before the class field trip, team CRDL would go out into the Grimm infested forest next to the school and collect a "bag" of rapier wasps, which they would somehow smuggle with them all the way to their destination right under the annoyingly observant gaze of Professor Goodwitch. They would then take the jars of sap that their grades depended on and use them as projectile weapons to attract the wasps to team RESN.

"Even assuming all this nonsense worked, they have Aura, you idiot! They can shrug off bullets! What are a few wasps going to do to them?" Cardin seethed angrily at his partner, whose turn it had been to come up with a plan.

"M-maybe they're allergic?" Russel offered desperately.

This wasn't the first plan Cardin had shot down. They'd all been suffering through his verbal and sometimes physical abuse for several weeks at this point, ever since his humiliating defeat in front of the entire class.

At first, he'd tried to repair the damage done to his rep by going after that rabbit girl again, after carefully waiting until none of that redheaded freak's team was around, but he'd learned the hard way that she had her own team too. One of them had a minigun, which was probably enough said about how _that _encounter had ended up.

Their leader twice beaten and humiliated, the rest of CRDL had tried to cheer him up by proposing that all they needed was a plan. It had worked for maybe a few days, back when it had seemed hopeful that something they planned might work, but none of the plans were good enough for Cardin.

He wanted a perfect solution to his problems, but unfortunately it didn't seem like one existed.

"It wouldn't _matter _if they're allergic or not if their stingers can't get through Aura!" Cardin yelled, clearly trying, and only _barely_ succeeding at not throwing something else at Russel.

"Hey, man," Sky hesitantly put forth, quailing slightly when his leader's gaze snapped onto him, but pushing forward desperately regardless. "You've been stressing over this for weeks, now. Don't you think it's maybe time to… let it go?"

His only response was a low growl, and he wisely shut up. Cardin began to pace around the room like a caged animal.

His teammates just didn't understand! This couldn't just be a simple _prank._ He wanted that Emiya kid _destroyed. Gone. _Permanently! Rapier wasps were never going to do that!

It was impossibly frustrating that this wasn't a problem he could solve by hitting it with his mace. Possibly the worst part had been when he'd realized just how much he'd been toyed with. After their fight, he'd just assumed Emiya was some kind of freakishly talented sword prodigy — and then he'd started eavesdropping on the guy's nightly sparring with the Nikos girl, which took place on the roof only just above their dorm.

He'd nearly been skewered by a hail of swords that swept down off the rooftop the first time he'd tried that. By this point, he had a pretty good idea of the guy's capabilities, and they were frankly terrifying. As painful as it was to admit it, the straightforward route was right out.

"Just… take a break, okay man?" Sky bravely spoke up once more. "Sleep on it? Maybe you'll have a plan in the morning."

It was pointless. He hadn't had a plan this morning, or the one before that. But… it wasn't like he had any better ideas. He growled again, but flopped down on his bed, much to the relief of his team.

He eventually fell asleep, still cursing Emiya Shirou, and wishing he had some way to get his revenge.

o-o-o-o-o

Ruby burst through the door to Team RVBY's room as they were getting ready for bed.

She looked dazed, slightly confused. Her eyes were puffy and red, like she'd been crying recently, although she was smiling happily. Her clothing was slightly disheveled.

Yang took in all these details in a split second, and was at her sister's side an instant later, leading her back out the door with her arm around the smaller girl's shoulders.

As the sisters left without explanation, Blake's eyes narrowed, and the Faunus quickly grabbed a small notebook.

Ren and Nora watched as, after she finished gathering her supplies, she hopped off her bed and slammed something into the floor, creating a small explosion and a burst of thick smoke. When it cleared, she was gone.

"Ninja stuff?" Nora asked Ren, unsurprised.

He nodded wisely.

Sensing that Ruby needed a private space to talk, Yang led her to a nearby unused classroom. It was locked, of course, but due to the urgency of the situation, Yang felt justified in simply punching the door open in a single fearsome blow and steering Ruby inside. Professor Goodwitch could just fix it later, after all.

Ruby found the wall with her back, and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor near the doorway, still looking shell-shocked.

Yang crossed her arms, looking down at her dazed sister, unsure of how to read Ruby's strange expression.

"Well?" she asked impatiently, after a few moments of watching the girl stare off into space with starry eyes.

"I _really_ like dates," Ruby mumbled happily, her eyes still focused miles away.

"_Details!" _Yang screamed.

In the hallway outside, shrouded in shadows, a certain teenage Faunus ninja cat-girl nodded along silently with her partner's shouted suggestion. She held her pen to her paper, ready to record all the sordid details. In the name of justice and truth, she would record all there was to know about Shirou's lecherous ways!

o-o-o-o-o

Cardin woke up in the middle of the night with a gasp as his Aura instinctively flared.

His eyes shot to the foot of his bed, where they met the gaze of what could only be a Grimm.

He rolled from his bed, cursing loudly at the fact that he kept his weapon in his locker — why weren't his team waking up? Why wasn't it attacking him? Why… why was he slowly calming down?

Oh, he was dreaming. That made way more sense. There was no other real explanation for the strange monster that seemed to be composed of a thick black mud that absorbed what little light there was in the room, with beady void-like eyes and a horrific grin.

His Aura reacted briefly again — could this really be a dream? It seemed so realistic — no, it had to be. Of course it was.

"What's wrong, Cardin-kun?" Once more, his Aura flared, as the… _thing's _voice seemed to vibrate directly into his mind – but the pulses of his soul were getting weaker. It was incredibly creepy, and he once more felt the urge to fight, or to flee… but on second thought, it sounded pretty innocent. Kind of like a kid. And Grimm couldn't talk, so it probably wasn't one of them, right?

The more he rationalized things, aided by the subtle influence pressing against his mind, the less his Aura fought against it — and the longer he crouched beside his bed, hesitating, the longer time it had to manipulate his thoughts.

Well, if it was a dream, he might as well answer it, right? It seemed like it would be a good listener, after all. Better than his stupid teammates, certainly.

He slowly sank down to his knees. When he spoke, his voice was that of a bitter, broken, spiteful man. "Everyone thinks I'm a joke ever since Emiya beat me in class! People used to be terrified to mess with me, and now I'm just the guy who got beat up by a kid with a wooden sword! And I can't think of a single way to get back at him." His eyes dropped to the floor as he confessed to his own weakness.

"You're so hopeless, Cardin-kun!~"

There was a thud. He looked up slightly and saw a knife embedded in the floor in front of him.

"Reputation repair device!" The creature burbled happily.

He stared at it for a moment before hesitantly reaching for it, pulling it from the floor with a grunt of effort. It fit well in his hand, but aside from that, it appeared to just be an ordinary kitchen knife. He looked back up at the monster, confusion clear on his face.

When it vibrated words into his mind once more, they were lower, quieter. Less excited, but more _expectant_, and all the more insidious for the change.

"_If you want to be feared again, you should just kill him."_

And then all was black.

o-o-o-o-o

Ozpin shot awake. He felt it again – the same kind of overwhelming power that he only associated with the Relics. Ancient devices of incredible power, created by the gods, and long thought — by him — to be sealed away.

Oh, at this point in his cycle of many lives he was intimately familiar with each and every one of the relics. He could tell them apart with his eyes closed, simply based off the unique flavor of the energy they gave off.

Weeks ago, he had felt the presence of one of the relics, or at least he'd thought he had, but it tasted… off. He hadn't been able to tell which one it was, which was abnormal to say the least – and when his eyes had shot towards the direction in which he felt it, he had found the strangest airship he'd ever seen falling from the sky.

By the time he'd arrived at the point of the crash landing, it was gone, or hidden somehow, and all he'd found was a strange boy – one with far too few answers and far too many skills for Ozpin to take his claims at face value.

Still, the boy had seemed sincere in his goals, and Oz fancied himself to be fairly skilled at judging character after having been alive for so many centuries. He'd let the matter slide, at least for a time, and welcomed him to his school. Best to keep both your potential enemies _and _your potential pawns close, he'd always thought.

Then, a week after that, he'd felt the presence of that same not-relic in the city of Vale. Distantly, like a hint of smoke on his tongue, he almost wrote it off as his imagination. Even he could get paranoid, or distracted, on occasion.

But now… the taste of the thing was thick enough that he could practically choke on it. Unmistakable – an object of immense power, but not Choice, Knowledge, Creation, or Destruction. Something else.

It was in his very school.

He roused himself swiftly, barely taking the time to slip on the bare minimum of socially acceptable clothing and grabbing his cane before dashing off silently through the halls of Beacon. He followed the cloying taste that seemed to coat his tongue towards what he quickly realized were the first-year dorms.

But by the time he arrived, it was gone. Not a hint of it remained, as if it had never been there in the first place, and he wasn't close enough at the time of its disappearance to pin it down to any one room.

Still, there were some deductions that could be made. Either one of his students bore an artifact comparable in power to one of the four Relics, and they were unusually adept at hiding its presence from him… or else someone else held it, and was somehow able to slip it in and out from directly under his metaphorical nose at will.

His mind, of course, immediately went to Raven… but there was no sense in jumping to conclusions. He would get to the bottom of this mystery eventually – he had nothing if not time, after all. Still, the way things were progressing, it was probably about time that he spoke with Emiya Shirou.

He, perhaps more than any other on Remnant, fully understood the necessity of keeping secrets sometimes… but with a relic being used on his very doorstep – no, even past that – it was time for answers.

He padded silently on bare feet back towards his office.

o-o-o-o-o

Cardin woke up on Sunday morning feeling like a new man, bright and refreshed, and the rest of his team noticed.

"Dude, are you… smiling?" Russel asked in shock.

"Well, you see, Russ, I just had the most amazing dream," he answered, looking at his partner with a wide grin – and wider eyes.

Sky and Dove shared surprised looks. There wasn't a hint of their leader's usual anger present in his voice. Although, his smile almost looked a little… manic.

"In fact," Cardin continued as he started to get dressed, "I actually think I've thought of a way to solve our little problem. _My _little problem."

The boys were stunned. "Well, what is it, boss?" Russel asked.

"Oh, don't worry about it," Cardin said as he laced up his boot. "I think I've got it under control."

Russel turned to his other teammates, who both shrugged. They were confused, but pleasantly so.

None of them, in their confusion, noticed Cardin slip a knife out from under his pillow, and slide it into the side of his boot before covering its exposed hilt with the leg of his pants.

o-o-o-o-o

"Roman," growled Junior, "the last time I loaned you men, every single one of them ended up in the hospital. From which they were promptly taken to jail."

The flame-haired criminal shrugged, and took a puff of his cigar. "Well, I didn't, obviously. Is it _my _fault if they were so incompetent that they got beaten up by a pair of twerps? If anything, you're lucky I'm even coming back to you after the unsatisfactory service you hired out last time."

Junior bristled. The two men were sat in a private back room at Junior's club. Junior was flanked, as usual, by a pair of lovely young twins, his personal bodyguards, though apparently they'd picked up a third member of the security detail — a young, blonde man with far too many scars for his apparent age. He stood a fair distance away from the girls, who occasionally looked at him with something that, if Roman didn't know better, he might have called fear.

Even Roman had to admit that the kid would have been intimidating — if he hadn't looked like such a dunderhead. Seriously, he'd just stood there the entire meeting so far smiling stupidly.

Roman himself, of course, had his own bodyguard with him – not that anyone else in the room was aware of the fact. Neo was pretty good at not being seen, and even better at not being heard.

"Right. Like I'm supposed to believe you _didn't _just cut and run the moment things went south, and leave my men behind as a sacrifice," Junior said from behind gritted teeth.

Roman leaned back in his chair casually, not at all perturbed by the accusation. "Hey, honor among thieves, am I right? I swear, each and every one of them was unconscious by the time I had to beat it. You know I wouldn't leave your guys if there was any other choice."

Junior frowned. "They all had their Auras unlocked."

"Yes, yes, and good for them." Roman rolled his eyes. "That didn't stop them from folding under a single hit, though. I _would_ add _'each' _to that, except literally one attack took out all of them at once."

The frown deepened.

"That said," Roman continued somewhat sarcastically, "I still find myself in need of more men. And you know, if nothing else, at least my money is good."

Junior leaned back as well. "And I'd love to take your money, Roman, but with how rapidly we've been hemorrhaging men to Huntsmen recently? I just don't have any to spare."

Roman tossed a small bag onto the table with a smirk. It spilled open as it hit the wood, spewing out highly denominated lien. "I'm sure you'll be able to rustle a few up," he said cockily.

Junior couldn't disguise the momentary flash of greed in his eyes, though he composed himself rapidly enough. "That… is a lot of lien. Perhaps… we could come to an agreement," the tall man replied. He paused for a moment to think. "In fact… Jaune, how do you feel about doing a job or two with my good friend Roman?"

For the first time, the blonde buffoon seemed to take an interest in the conversation instead of just happily smiling off into space. "Uh, boss? It kind of sounds like that would be… illegal?"

Roman leaned forward and cradled his head in his hands. Was this really what he'd been reduced to? Trying to hire idiots like this?

Junior adopted a forced cheer to his voice – one that Roman could tell was practiced, as if he'd had to use it a lot recently. "Not at all, Jaune! I'm just asking you to protect my friend here while he works on his own stuff. In fact, _Huntsmen_ take protection jobs like this all the time! You never know when some ne'er-do-wells might attack an innocent businessman – or when the Grimm might, for that matter!"

"H-huntsmen? Well… alright, then. I'll do it." The kid nodded in determination.

"Great! Hey, would you mind running to the bar and getting me a drink?"

"Sure thing, boss." Jaune quickly left the room.

Roman raised an eyebrow. "Really, Junior?"

"I know, I know," he sighed. "Look. The kid's got something wrong in his head, and I'll be the first to admit that – but that doesn't mean he won't be useful."

"Please, do elaborate," Roman said, his voice as dry as the desert.

"He's only been working here for a few weeks, but he's one of our best fighters. You don't understand – when the kid started here, he hadn't even _heard _of Aura. He had no idea what it was until _we_ had to unlock it for him – after he went out and fought a Beowulf for _fun_."

Roman raised an eyebrow lazily, slightly impressed. "And he survived? Not bad. Bet he never made that mistake again, though."

Junior shook his head. "Wrong on both counts. Not just survived, he _killed_ it, with a kitchen knife. And every _goddamn _day he shows up to work bleeding again, with a brand-new story about how he went off and killed some more Grimm. He's good, but I'd almost welcome you taking him for a while, if it kept him out of that kind of trouble – he gets hurt way too much for my liking."

Alright, not slightly, then. _Moderately_ impressed. He took another puff of his cigar. "Killing a few Grimm is good for a civvie with no idea what Aura is, I'll give you that. But there's a difference between a Beowulf or two and a trained Huntsman."

"Alright, well, first of all, you'd _better _not be telling me you're taking my men up against Huntsmen on purpose," Junior said with an accusatory glare.

Roman shrugged flippantly. "You never know! Shit happens sometimes."

"And second," he continued, "Miltia and Melanie are afraid to fight him again."

Tellingly, the girls behind the club owner scowled deeply – but they didn't refute the claim.

Now, _that _caught his attention. He carefully pulled his cigar away from his lips. "Junior, I've seen these lovely twins of yours take on hardened gangsters and skilled Huntsmen alike, with no hesitation. Even when they get beat, they're back up and raring to go by the time the next one comes along." He inclined his head to them in respect for their not insignificant skills. "There's no way your fresh meat scares them after working here for just a couple of weeks."

"The kid is some kind of berserker," Miltia spoke up, shuddering.

Melanie nodded along with her. "At first, he refused to fight us at all, because 'we're pretty girls' or some stupid '_manly_' shit like that."

"But Junior said he needed training, so he kept him late on one of the days he was less injured than usual and forced him to try." Her twin easily picked up the story.

"For a bit, I just kicked him around, and he fought like a toddler, protesting the whole time."

"And then Junior told him to just act like she was a Grimm, and like he was a Huntsman," Miltia said grimly.

Both sisters shivered in unison. "Some kinda switch got flipped, I guess. He took a second to gather himself, and when he opened his eyes again, it was like he was a different person," Melanie said. "He came at me with this freaky-ass smile, and he just _wouldn't stop._"

"He was taking hits like nobody's business, but nothing phased him _at all._ No matter how much pain he had to have been in, he just kept coming after her with that damn knife."

"He has a frankly stupid amount of Aura, too – and pain does pretty much jack shit to slow him down… It was like kicking a wall."

"But eventually, his Aura must have been running low, because suddenly one of her kicks sliced into him and blood went flying everywhere."

"I paused. Normally people give up by then. _Before _then…"

"And he took advantage of it and takes her to the ground. And then he just sat there _smiling_ on top of her and hacking at her with his fuckin' cleaver. Mel was screaming, Junior and I were screaming at him to stop, and he just kept chopping and stabbing away."

"It was…" Melanie's voice trailed off, and her eyes seemed haunted.

"I thought he was gonna kill her," Miltia finished quietly. "We both jumped in, Junior and I. I tried to drag him off her, but he didn't stop until Junior brained him with his bat and knocked him out."

"He woke up an hour later and just asked 'how did I do?' like he didn't remember any of it. With that stupid _fucking _smile."

Roman steepled his fingers. Fine, at this point he was seriously impressed. "Interesting. I suppose I certainly could have done with someone who doesn't know when to quit back when I was working with the previous bunch. Maybe he would have lasted for longer than a split second against two teenagers."

"Yeah, I get it, you didn't appreciate the help." Junior crossed his arms. "If you're so dissatisfied, then why'd you even come back?"

Roman sighed, and lowered his eyes. "Honestly, Junior? I'm getting a little desperate here. I need people to cover my back. With the shit I'm getting caught up in... it's either find some quality help, soon, or leave it to Adam fucking Taurus and his petting-zoo goons, who I trust _significantly_ less far than I could throw him."

Junior was honestly surprised. It was rare, very rare, to see Roman show any hint of weakness. "What about Neo? I thought she filled the 'having your back' position."

Roman's usual cocky grin returned. "Neo's great. If I could have a dozen more of her, I'd be able to conquer the whole world, but she's one of a kind." And he wasn't just saying that because she was standing right next to him, invisible behind an illusion. "But she's still only one person. Seriously, man, the people who've… _hired _me, they're no joke. Dangerous, capital D."

Junior sighed again as well. Capital D typically meant bad for business. "Listen, you want him or not? He's pretty much all I can spare at this point, but if you're looking for quality over quantity, he's your guy. Not Huntsman level, but he'll lock one down for a good while. Plus, if they care at all about making sure nobody dies, it'll be hard for them to knock him out of a fight. Like the girls said, he can take a licking and keep on ticking."

"Yeah, I'll take him," Roman said. "He sounds good enough. Not like I have much of a choice at this point, but thanks, man. I do really appreciate it."

Junior stared down at the bag of lien. In a moment of clear anguish, he scooped it up and tossed it back towards Torchwick. "Listen. Whatever happens with this gig of yours, it will _not _affect my business. You promise me that, you can have Jaune."

Roman scowled down at the sizable sum of money. "Junior…"

"The fact that you can't immediately make that promise makes me think maybe I shouldn't loan my men to you at all. _Maybe_ I should keep them around, for added security."

Roman laughed bitterly. "Like that would help. Junior, like it or not, the people who've hired me? They're going to change the _world._ You can't stop them. _I _certainly can't stop them. You know the old saying – if you can't beat 'em…"

Junior barked out a brief laugh as well. "You're saying if I throw my piece into the mix, if one of _my_ men is helping you, I might… what, get some leniency, when all is said and done?"

"Think of it as a little bit of insurance?" Roman shrugged.

"Not good enough."

Roman winced. "Listen. Junior, buddy. What I'm about to say doesn't leave this room, alright?"

Junior and his twins nodded.

"I'm in an alliance of necessity here, alright? The _instant _I see a way out, a way to get back at the bastards who are strong-arming me into this? I'll be _all _over it. If your kid's as good as you say, I'll drag him right on out with me. No sacrifices. But as long as it seems like their plan is working, that it's going to succeed? It would _really_ be smarter for you to work with them. If I try to stop, or if I try a double-cross and it fails? I'm dead, and so is Neo. Now, it might be _easier_ for me to spot an opportunity and make it actually _work _if I had trustworthy help. And if I never do get the chance, then it would really be better for you to be seen as squarely on their side."

"I don't like this," Junior grumbled.

Roman nodded. "We're agreed there."

"Fine. Jaune is yours. But don't screw me over on this, alright?"

Roman nodded again, this time in relief. "Thank you. I appreciate it. Keep the money – it's not much use to me right now anyways."

Junior swept it back up without hesitation. "Sure. So, he might be an idiot, but he's easy to work with. Need him to do something? Tell him it's what Huntsmen do. Need him to fight someone? Tell them they're working with the Grimm."

Roman chuckled at that. If only Junior knew. His… _employers _hadn't told him much – at this stage, in fact, he was just operating under blanket orders to steal as much Dust as possible, with no idea what it was to be used for. But some of the things he'd seen, some of the threats they'd made, when they'd first 'hired' him… they didn't paint a pretty picture.

"Eh, who am I kidding. Those two things seem to be what sets him off the most, but with your silver tongue, I'm sure you won't have any trouble handling him. He'll basically believe anything you tell him."

"Who will?" Jaune asked as he stepped back through the door, carrying an artistic looking cocktail of some sort.

"Oh, just an old acquaintance of ours," Roman immediately lied smoothly with a small chuckle. "Real piece of work. Gullible as a sheep, that guy."

Jaune laughed obliviously along with him as he handed Junior his drink.

Roman stared at Junior and nodded slightly with a smirk. Yeah, the kid would do. "So, Jaune, was it? Looks like we'll be working together for a while. I know it might not be as glamorous as Junior's club, but I was trained as a Huntsman, back in the day. Stick with me long enough and you might learn a few things."

Jaune's eyes lit up. Gods, this was almost too easy – Roman had met dogs less easily manipulated than this guy. "R-really? And Junior said it was okay?"

"Wouldn't steal you from him otherwise, kid," he said with a toothy smile. "Call me Roman."

o-o-o-o-o

Qrow Branwen stared down at his sixth drink. He idly swirled around the ice cubes. Perhaps lucky number six was the one that would make him forget his failures – but probably not, he knew from experience. No, he'd probably be here for quite a few more.

He'd been in Vale for a few weeks now, ever since the disastrous ending of his last mission. He'd always hated the downtime in between missions, just sitting on his ass _thinking _about everything that had gone wrong. How if he'd been better, if he'd been sooner, if he hadn't been so goddamn _wasted_, things might have gone differently. He took a sip.

He'd saved the girl's life, but only barely. Last he heard, they had her hooked up to a machine in Beacon's fancy basement. It was a pretty harsh blow to their side of the war – and a pretty huge fuck-up on Qrow's part.

While Oz found him something else to do, he was stuck in the city, doing what he did best – drowning his sorrows. He hadn't even told his family – Tai or the girls – that he was in town. Too ashamed to face them. Instead, he'd just been hopping around bars, a different one every night. Tonight, he was in a place with a name he wasn't even sure he'd be able to pronounce sober – Ahnene-something. He liked it. Good service, a couple of pretty young waitresses.

Four Maidens in the whole world. Just four. And one of them crippled, nearly killed, on his watch. He took another swig. The amber liquid left in the glass was running low. He looked around for one of the waitresses–

A new drink was placed beside his nearly empty one, and a man slid easily into the chair opposite him, holding a drink of his own.

Qrow let his bleary eyes focus on the man for a moment. He was tall, with blue hair swept back into a long ponytail, silver earrings and red eyes. Eyes like his – and his sister's. They instantly put him in a bad mood. He was wearing some kind of butler-looking getup. "Hey. Don't you work here?" Qrow asked, voice gravelly.

The man nodded. "Sure do," he said, and took a hearty swig of his own drink. His own voice was brash, confident.

"I don't think you're supposed to be drinking on the job," Qrow said with a small chuckle at his own hypocrisy.

"I'm not supposed to keep serving alcohol to people too drunk to hear last call, either, which was fifteen minutes ago. And yet, here we are." He smiled. He had large canines, Qrow noted.

He looked around, his eyes once more taking a few moments to adjust to the dim light, and he realized that he was in fact the last remaining patron. The waitress with the long green hair, tied up in twin-tails, was wiping down the empty bar. "Oh. Oops." He made no move to get up and leave, instead throwing back the rest of his drink before reaching for lucky number seven.

The man laughed. "You're an interesting one, aren't you?"

Qrow took in the man's almost predatory expression, and his eyes flicked back to the long hair and earrings, before he scoffed dismissively and looked away. "Barking up the wrong tree, bud. I don't think we're batting for the same team."

"Oh, a funny guy," the man responded without any hint of discomfort, his smile widening if anything. "I like that. So, what brings a man to drink himself to a stupor on a Sunday night? No work in the morning?" He gulped once more at the sizable drink in his own hands, nearly finishing it.

Qrow returned his gaze to the strange waiter, a hint of anger entering his stare. "Listen. Not. Interested. I'm not going to say it again."

"Suit yourself," the man shrugged, finishing his drink.

He stood from the table, heading over behind the bar to pour himself another. "I just usually like to get to know people a little bit before I kick their ass," he called over.

"Excuse me?" Qrow stared at him incredulously.

"Do you not understand how this is going to go? There's one or two every night who stays past their welcome. I make 'em go home. By any means necessary."

Qrow snorted in laughter again, taking another swig. "Why'd you bring me another drink, then?"

The man laughed far more fully, sounding genuinely cheerful. "It would be rude of me to drink alone, of course!" So saying, he tilted his own drink back and practically chugged the entire thing, before starting to pour yet another.

Qrow raised an eyebrow, but found himself grinning as well. "You know, you'd probably have more luck if you just asked me to leave peacefully. I don't think a fight would end up as well for you as you think it would." That said, however… the man _did_ move with a certain confidence, a grace normally only seen in trained fighters.

"Ah, but that would be no fun, would it? What's the point of being a bouncer if you don't get to fight?"

The waitress stood near him scoffed, speaking up for the first time. "Lancer, you're _not _a bouncer. You're just a layabout who likes to pick fights with drunk patrons."

"Hey, hey, Chikagi! If not for me, who would defend the honor of this fine establishment?" the man, Lancer, responded in mock offense.

She merely scoffed again and went back to cleaning.

"Besides, I know this guy's type," he continued, grinning back at Qrow once more and taking yet another shot of hard liquor. "He's here drinking because he's got something bottled up that he's trying to let go of. The booze'll help, sure, but he's tried that already, and it's not working. Am I right?"

Qrow's grin dropped at the analysis. He wasn't _wrong_, per se, but to be so boldly called out…

"No, what he needs is either a good fight or a good fuck, and I can only give him one of those."

There was a slight gasp from a second waitress, a girl with short orange hair, as she came out of the kitchen. "Lancer! Must you be so vulgar?"

"A-ah. Sorry, Hibiki." Lancer grinned and rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

Greenie – Chikagi – laughed again. "Oh yeah, Lancer? I'm not surprised you can only deliver on one of those."

That actually got a little red to the blue-haired man's cheeks, though that might have just been the alcohol. "Hey! No, I meant because he said– not because–"

Qrow laughed, enjoying the impromptu entertainment. It was a little surprising, actually. The challenge laid out by the waiter _had_ actually gotten his blood flowing a bit, exhilarated him in a way the drinks hadn't, and had taken his mind off his woes.

He staggered to his feet, finishing the drink. He spread his arms out a little and smirked. "Well? I'm right here, friend. You want me to leave, right? Come make me."

Lancer grinned right back at him, once more quaffing his own glass. "Sure. Let's take it outside, though."

Qrow amicably led the way out of the bar, Lancer following behind him. The waitresses seemed unconcerned. "Have fun, you two!" Hibiki cheered with a small wave.

Qrow noted the name of the bar as he left. 'Ahnenerbe.' What the hell even was that?

"This alley work for you?" Lancer gestured with a happy smile.

Qrow nodded along as he cracked his knuckles, walking into the alley in question. "Hey, man, fair warning. I'm Huntsman trained, and I don't want to hurt you, so if you want to back out, now's your last–"

Lancer's fist impacted the side of his face as he turned to speak to him, sending him staggering back several steps. He glared up at the blue-haired man, who now was stood in a boxing stance and bearing a wide grin. His own lips slowly twisted up into a matching smile, and he launched himself forward.

o-o-o-o-o

The fight was short and brutal. Neither man focused on defense in the slightest, both content to whale on each other with impunity – the act of being pounded as satisfying, to the two brawlers, as the pounding itself was.

With every blow, either landed or received, Qrow felt his tensions being released. The pain was cathartic, the feel of his fist impacting flesh satisfying in the extreme, all of it dulled _just _right by the alcohol. He found himself laughing, but it was unlike his usual laughter – it lacked bitterness, lacked self-deprecation. It was the simple, pure laughter of a man enjoying mankind's oldest pastime.

Through it all, he was matched blow for blow, laugh for laugh, with his strange opponent.

Qrow wasn't holding back. At all. He was using every ounce of the training he'd accumulated over the years, which was a significant amount, and yet he was evenly matched. _Exactly _evenly matched – which really should have been impossible.

Either he'd somehow found the one person in the world who was _exactly _as well trained as he was, which was implausible, or the man was better than him, and was lowering himself down to just the right level so the fight would be satisfying for both of them – which was just as unlikely. After all, Qrow was one of the most skilled Huntsmen on Remnant, even while drunk. How was it that some random waiter from a bar with a shitty name was able to match him?

Their fight was cut short, however. Reacting to some cue, both men dove backwards simultaneously. A split second later, a giant steel girder crashed into the ground where they'd been duking it out, plunging point first deeply into the ground.

They both froze, staring at the interrupting piece of metal, and then looked up as one to the completely girder-free sky, which offered no explanation for how the thing had arrived there.

Red eyes met red eyes, both pairs looking slightly sheepish. "Ah, sorry. This kind of thing tends to happen a lot near me," both men said simultaneously.

"Huh?" they both followed up with, staring at each other in shock, before both started to laugh.

"Damn, man," Qrow chuckled as he began to rub at a bruised side. "You've got a mean hook."

"You're not half bad yourself," Lancer responded with a wide smile.

Qrow noted that the man seemed to be in pretty good shape – as in, less beat-up looking than he himself was. Not as in having a well-sculpted body, although that was clearly true as well – his sweat-stained uniform clung tightly to his muscles. Interesting – so the man _was_ probably more skilled than he was.

"Who trained you?" he found himself asking. "It's been a long time since I've met someone who could stand up to me in a brawl, let alone beat me."

Lancer shrugged easily. "Call it a draw. And, well, my teacher was the toughest bitch you've ever heard of."

Qrow scowled. "Her name wasn't Raven, was it?"

Lancer shook his head.

"Glynda?" Qrow hazarded another guess.

Lancer laughed. "No. Doubt you've heard of her, pal."

Qrow snorted. "If you say so. And hey, thanks. I think I needed this."

Lancer smiled, his long canines flashing in the dim light of the alley. "Anytime. And I mean that literally – I've been bored. You wouldn't believe how long it's been since I've had a halfway decent fight."

"Heh. I'll take that as a compliment," Qrow chuckled. "I might take you up on that. You work here every night?"

Lancer nodded. "Pretty much. Call me Lancer, by the way," he said, extending a hand.

Qrow took it with a firm grip. "Qrow. Pleasure to meet you."

Lancer took a step back, sparing one last glance at the strange girder that had seemingly attacked them out of nowhere, before heading back towards the bar's entrance. "See you around!" he called back over his shoulder.

"Yeah, I think you will," Qrow called back with a smile.

He turned and began to walk back in the general direction of his apartment, his muscles gloriously sore. He began to whistle a little.

He felt better than he had in a long time.

o-o-o-o-o

**Hey, so, less main character focus this time. Hopefully appropriately labeled at the top, I know some reviewers don't like the side characters as much, but I personally like to explore different characters. As I mentioned before, I do recommend that you read the interlude chapters instead of skipping them!  
**

**Totally hetero not at all homoerotic Qrow/Lancer bromance ship away! I've wanted this to be a thing for a while. Just to be clear, this is in fact a couple of manly men doing manly things together, and it's not going to turn romantic, but that doesn't mean it won't be a semi-suggestive friendship.**

**Speaking of, a few reviewers were asking about scars, and why I didn't have the girls react to the scar from Lancer's Gae Bulg. A few other reviewers were quick to point out that him having a scar from that is actually Fanon, rather than Canon. **

**Honestly? I kind of like him having a scar. It makes sense to me that a cursed spear that leaves unhealing wounds would in fact leave some mark, even after being miraculously cured. In fact, my other fic (**_**Don't**_** go read it, it's not very good and I haven't updated it in a long time) has a scar on chest scene, and I instantly got some flak for it. Seems like if you have a shirtless Shirou without a scar, people immediately ask where it is, and if he does have it, people immediately declare that it's fanon and doesn't belong!**

**Even if I'm a fan of the scar, however, people **_**are**_** right – he doesn't have it in the VNs. Rin basically rebuilds him an entire new heart and chest and stuff instead of 'healing' it, so he's basically got brand new parts with no tool marks. Plus, this is a more lighthearted fic, and having a giant cursed scar would probably make Shirou seem just a little more edgy than I want him to.**

**Thanks a ton for reading! Please continue to leave reviews letting me know what you like, what you don't like, things you want to see, etc.! I aim to please!**


	10. Chapter 10

"Yang, it was _amazing! _We went to all the best weapon stores in the city! He knows so much about weapons, it's unreal!"

Ruby's voice drifted faintly out into the hallway, picked up by two sensitive pairs of ears – one human, one feline, both working in concert for ultimate eavesdropping potential.

"It's so great that you two have a shared hobby!" Yang replied, laughing. "I'm happy for you, Rubes, but come on, get to the good parts!

_Yes, get to the good parts,_ Blake silently agreed. Still, it was already enough to get started. Her pen scratched at the paper of her notebook faster than she'd ever written before.

_He stood shirtless in the morning light, a thin sheen of sweat causing his lean muscles to sparkle against the breaking dawn. His copper-red hair shone like the blood of the fifty Grimm he'd just single-handedly slain._

_The girl looked at him with wide, innocent eyes, her petite frame still shaking – in fear or excitement? She couldn't tell. "Wow, you sure do know how to handle your weapon," she said in awe, biting her bottom lip._

_He turned to face her, his golden eyes smoldering with passion, and he took a step towards her. "Heh," he laughed with a cocky smirk. "I could teach you a thing or two, if you want."_

_She gasped as he swept her up with one arm into a heated embrace. Her eyes shot down in surprise, and when they returned to his, they shone with exhilaration. "Now _that's _a longsword!" she whispered into his ear._

Uh oh, Blake had gotten caught up in the scene and missed part of the conversation. Something about ice cream. She hastily penned in a line break – she could always go back and finish the scene later. Besides, she had her Scroll recording the whole conversation, for later reference.

It seemed like the conversation was shifting again, but she had time to scribble down one or two more lines that she would develop later.

"_What are we going to do with the ice cream?" She asked nervously. _

_Her question was answered a moment later, as the chilly treat dripped onto her. She shivered in pleasure as the cold, sugary droplets rolled down the sensitive skin of her bare neck, and then gasped loudly as his warm mouth descended over them–_

"And Yang, you're not going to believe this, but somehow, he figured out Mom's secret cookie recipe!"

Yang paused, and when she responded, it was with hope and doubt in equal measure. "I-impossible. You probably just liked them a lot because you like _him."_

"No, I swear! It was the same! I've _never _forgotten that taste, Yang. You _know _that." Blake was honestly surprised at the raw passion present in the girl's voice.

_Note to self, _she wrote. _Use the phrase 'raw passion' later_. That was good stuff.

"The secret ingredient was Dust!" Ruby continued.

_Second note to self. Dust can spice up baking – how can it spice up the bedroom?_

Yang scoffed. "Ruby, that's ridiculous. Mom told me a million times the secret ingredient was love!"

Ruby growled. "Yes, Yang, I remember. I _also _remember you telling me that the entire recipe was _just _flour, eggs, chocolate, and _love_!"

"Is it… not?"

Blake suppressed a snort of laughter.

"_No!_ It is not! There's so much more, which I _know _now thanks to Shirou!"

"_There's so much more to love that I've never known – but now, thanks to you…" _Blake's character apparently said, according to her furious writing.

"Aww! But Ruuuby," Yang teased in a sing-song voice. "You're missing the point! Were they made with _looove?"_

Ruby paused momentarily before answering.

"Y-yes," she mumbled, only barely audibly.

There was another brief silence that was quickly filled by Yang's squeal of excitement, which rapidly grew in pitch and volume.

"Shut up!_ It was magical and I hate you!" _Ruby screamed over her sister. It only served to somehow, impossibly, make Yang squeal even louder.

Blake smiled. This was honestly adorable. That wouldn't stop her from writing smut about it, of course, but it was still really heartwarming. Pen touched paper once more.

_She lay back, wearing only her brilliantly red cloak. He sat beside her on the edge of the bed, staring off into the distance mysteriously. She reached out with one delicate hand, tracing a line down the rock-hard muscles of his back. "It was magical," she purred._

Finally, the air-raid siren that was Yang Xiao Long ran out of breath, ending its merciless assault on Blake's ears.

"My little sister's growing up!" Yang said, chuckling slightly after gasping for air for a few moments before sobering up. "So, they… they really were Mom's recipe?"

"They really were!" Ruby responded happily.

"And you didn't…" Yang realized what she was asking mid-sentence and sighed. "Save me any? Never mind. Forgot who I was talking to for a second there."

"Actually~!" There was the sound of cloth and paper rustling.

Yang gasped.

"How could I forget my big sister? Of course I saved you one!" Ruby said. Blake could practically see the wide smile on the girl's face.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Ruby asked a few moments later. "You're supposed to eat it, not just stare at it!"

Yang huffed. "Well, you spent so much time hyping them up… I don't want to be disappointed if it's not the same. Or… worse, if it _is_ the same, but it's not as good as it used to be, and it's my memories that were wrong? I'm not like you, Ruby – I couldn't just keep searching, disappointed every time. I haven't had a cookie in _years _because not a single one I've tasted since then compares to the last batch Mom made, before…"

Blake blinked. Wow, she'd honestly never heard her partner sound this vulnerable before. She felt a sudden spike of guilt – maybe this wasn't something she should be listening in on. But… she had come this far, hadn't she? Her curiosity waged war with her guilt, and won handily, demanding that she stay and listen for just a moment more. She _had _to know how the story ended – would the hero manage to satisfy the high expectations of the fair maiden's older sister?

"Just eat it, silly," Ruby said softly.

Blake twitched her ears, focusing even more intently, just in time to barely make out the sound of a bite, followed by chewing.

There was silence as the girl continued to eat.

Then there was a sniffle – and then another. "Yeah," Yang said quietly, before choking back a sob. "It's the same."

Blake smiled sadly – happy that her partner had reclaimed a piece of her childhood, and sorry for the loss in the first place. She stood silently and padded away on catlike feet. She'd let them have their moment. She had a… report, to write, after all.

Behind her, in the abandoned classroom, Ruby held Yang in a tight hug. "I know," she said soothingly, and rubbed her back as Yang continued to shake in huge, quiet sobs. "I know."

When Yang finally slipped back into her dorm room later, eyes still slightly puffy, Blake smiled at her, but didn't mention them, which earned her a nod of thanks.

Instead, Blake looked back to her Scroll, extended fully into its tablet mode, and continued to type, her smile growing wider. It was time to add in some other characters...

o-o-o-o-o

"Ooh, I'm so excited!" Ruby exclaimed. "Forever Fall is _so_ much cooler than the Emerald Forest!"

"You're just saying that because you like the color red," Weiss noted, smirking.

"Well, duh!" Her team leader answered. "Red is the best! Plus, it's basically our team color! All four of us wear it, after all."

Shirou nodded thoughtfully. She did have a point. The four of them wore black, grey, white, and gold – all highlighted with the same bright crimson. "Are the Grimm here any different than we're used to?"

"They should be comparable to those in the Emerald Forest," Pyrrha answered with a smile. "In fact, considering how abnormally strong the Grimm we saw during initiation were, this should be a walk in the park."

Team RESN, alongside teams RVBY and CRDL, were all packed tightly into a single Bullhead, along with Professor Goodwitch. As the top three teams of their class, they were supposedly headed to a slightly more dangerous portion of the forest, while the other three teams in their year were led to a safer location by Professor Port. Their task, however, was all the same – to collect the bright red sap from the trees that grew here for the use of Professor Peach. Shirou knew the sap could be distilled down into the sweet purple syrup Nora was so fond of, but supposedly it had some medicinal properties as well.

"Easy or not, it will be nice to get out of the classroom for a change," Weiss said. Even in the Bullhead, she sat with perfect posture, legs daintily crossed and hands folded in her lap.

Ruby snorted. "You're just tired of getting beat up by Shirou every day," pointed out, slouching heavily in a picture of perfect contrast to her partner.

Weiss blushed. "N-not at all! I'll have you know that I've felt more progress in my training in the last few weeks than… well, than ever, honestly."

Ruby pouted and kicked her legs up and down. "I noticed. I think I'm getting better too, but you're just beating me even more lately."

"She's getting used to your style," Pyrrha said, laying a comforting hand on her leader's shoulder. "Your abilities are powerful, but Weiss has more tricks up her sleeve than you do. As you both grow more familiar with each other's fighting styles, it will grow ever harder to beat her. But, the more she pushes you, the faster you'll improve – and you'll truly feel that progress when you go up against someone who _isn't_ Weiss."

Weiss smiled at Ruby. "And I think we all saw that last Friday. Russel's weapons are quite similar to mine, you know – and you wiped the floor with him."

It was something of a matter of fact by now that CRDL only held their position as the number three team because they could beat the lower half of the class easily – but the difference between CRDL and the top two was as great as that between them and number four. Not a one of them had yet managed to beat _any_ member of RESN or RVBY in a one on one.

Ruby grinned happily. "Thanks, guys. I know, I'm doing way better than I thought I would be – it's just annoying still being the weakest member of the team, even though I know that probably won't change for… a while."

Shirou shook his head and smiled back. "You've got to stop thinking about it like that. Don't compare us to each other – we all have different strengths and weaknesses."

"Your value to the team is measured not in personal strength, especially not against your other team members," Pyrrha backed up her partner.

"Just wait until we start the team fights," Shirou nodded.

"What if we got a head start on those?" Ruby asked, eyes gleaming. "We could all train together, two on two!"

Weiss inclined her head thoughtfully. "Interesting. It would certainly give us a leg up over the competition."

"You know we're sitting right here, right?" Yang called over from a few seats away. "Hey, Team RVBY! I vote we start doing team fights too, so we don't fall behind!"

Ren, Nora, and Blake nodded along amicably.

"Well, now we _have_ to do it," Pyrrha laughed lightly.

"Where, though?" Shirou asked. "I don't know if there's enough room on the rooftops for all four of us."

"Or all eight, if we wanted to do some inter-team training!" Ruby continued. "We could practice working together as a full unit!"

"The thought does have some merit," Weiss said with a demure but warm smile at her partner. Ruby beamed back at her – while she valued support from Shirou and Pyrrha immensely, approval from Weiss was rare enough that it was a special confidence boost all its own.

"I'm sure Professor Goodwitch would find some way to accommodate us," Pyrrha said. "She can't rightly complain if we essentially want to do extra work for her class."

As if in response to the mention of her name, their professor's voice echoed through the Bullhead's intercom. "Prepare for landing, students. We have arrived."

The aircraft touched down in a small clearing barely wide enough for even the compact VTOL to fit.

The three teams of trainees filed out of the vehicle dutifully. Ruby looked around in awe at the rich red foliage of all the trees, a color somehow shared by the thick, soft grass beneath their feet – though she was the only one of their team who had been here before, it was no less breathtaking a sight than it had been the first time.

"Follow me," Glynda called sternly before striding off towards where the woods were thickest. She flicked her riding crop idly, and a box soared out of the bullhead to levitate along behind her, filled with large glass jars.

They did so, walking for several minutes and chatting easily amongst themselves in a rough line. Glynda permitted it for a while, before speaking up loudly and instantly cutting off the chatter.

"Yes, students, the forest of Forever Fall is indeed beautiful. But – we are not here to sight-see! As you are all aware, this many Aura-users present in such a concentrated area will act as a beacon for the Grimm."

She came to a halt, and spun around to face them. The staggered line condensed into a rough blob of students as those furthest back caught up. Shirou's team found themselves in the middle, between CRDL and RVBY.

"You should all split up into your teams, so as to reduce this high concentration of Aura somewhat, as you each collect one full jar of sap from the trees here in the deep woods. _I_ will be here to make sure that none of you die in the process – though let it be said, if I must step in to save your lives, it will reflect poorly on your grades. We will rendezvous back here at four o'clock." She offered the class a smile – which was _quite_ rare. "And perhaps most importantly, have fun – remember, the more positivity, the less Grimm. Now, come collect your jars."

Ren and Cardin stepped forward towards the box, which Glynda lowered to the ground. Ruby made to step forward as well, but Shirou waved her back and stepped forward in the small girl's stead.

He knelt beside the box and reached into it just as Cardin stood up, off to his right. Before the taller boy moved back towards his teammates, he paused, and then turned back towards the box and casually reached out an arm. Something glinted in his hand.

"_Hrk–"_

Shirou let out a small gasping choke as he felt a sharp pinching sensation from his right armpit, followed immediately by the agony of what he could tell was a punctured lung. In an instinctive reaction to the pain, he awkwardly threw himself to his left, crashing into Ren and falling to the ground.

As he pulled away, there was a sickening _sucking _noise as the bloodstained kitchen knife, still held in Cardin's hand, was pulled free from where it had been thrust into his unarmored armpit.

_How?_ He hadn't sensed even the _slightest _hint of hostility from the boy, he thought blearily through the pain.

In fact, it was strange – he'd gotten used to a tension, an aggression that Cardin always held when he was near him – but apparently not used to it enough to have noticed when it was suddenly no longer there. Cardin had casually reached over and stabbed him with all the bloodlust of a wet dish-towel.

There was a brief moment where everyone, including Professor Goodwitch, stood frozen, eyes wide.

The only sound that could be heard was Cardin's laughter.

It wasn't manic. It wasn't sinister. It wasn't the laugh of a man who'd just attempted murder – no, it was the subdued chuckle of a man who had just been told a moderately amusing joke. Perhaps it was the incongruity of that laugh that left everyone so stunned – like they half expected Cardin to own up to the funny but harmless prank he'd just pulled.

Shirou pushed at the ground with his legs, scooting backward further away from Cardin, and let out a weak wheezing noise as he clutched at his armpit with his left hand. Blood spilled past it, dripping down to the like-colored grass. Cardin took a step towards him, still chuckling.

"_SHIROU!" _

A burnished golden disc wrapped in a roiling black nimbus collided with the side of Cardin's head like a runaway train, sending the boy flying. His body hit the ground meters away and flopped like a sack of potatoes, clearly out cold.

In the same instant, Pyrrha slid to the ground by Shirou's side, gathering him up into her arms and trying to apply pressure to the wound.

The dam broke, and the others all reacted as one.

Ruby fell forwards onto her knees and one hand, the other outstretched futilely towards Shirou's prone form, her face locked in a rictus of abject horror and fear. She didn't – couldn't – make a sound.

Weiss ran forward a few steps, and then froze again, unsure of what to do. Letting loose an uncharacteristic shriek of pure rage, she spun and flourished her rapier, encasing Cardin's body in a thick block of ice.

Yang ran towards her sister, sinking down next to her and pulling the girl's insensate form into a tight embrace as Ruby began to sob.

Ren, who had stumbled backwards from Shirou's initial impact with him, stepped forward and knelt beside Pyrrha, calmly beginning first aid – but Nora _screamed._ Anger, fear, sadness – it was some mix of those, certainly, though it was unclear in what proportion. It was raw and primal, and she spun on the remaining three members of Cardin's team. '

Blake flickered into existence next to the petite berserker, Gambol Shroud unsheathed and raised threateningly.

The other three boys present didn't even register the threat posed by the two girls, caught up in horror of their own. Russel stumbled back, falling to his rear and continuing to scramble backwards. "Oh shit. _Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit…" _he began to hyperventilate. Dove and Sky remained frozen in shock, utterly blindsided by their leader's actions.

Glynda shouted, but her voice was overwhelmed by the various other shouts and exclamations. Only Pyrrha and Ren, those closest to her, heard her plaintive cry. "Students! Stop at _once! _Control yourselves, or–"

A deep, echoing roar arose from the forest all around them. It came from no particular direction – or rather, it came from every direction, hundreds of monstrous throats roaring, howling, and shrieking in perfect unison.

"The Grimm…" Glynda finished in a whisper, horrified despite herself, before mustering her faux confidence once more. "Students! Fighting retreat! Back to the Bullhead!"

A few responded. Nora and Blake, who already had weapons drawn, turned towards the surrounding woods. Dove managed to shake himself out of his stupor and draw his sword, standing protectively over Russel.

Yang, however, was preoccupied with her sister, who was now trying to crawl towards Shirou, and Pyrrha refused to let go of her wheezing partner. Ren hesitated and reached for his weapons, shooting a questioning look at Glynda just as the first Grimm became visible through the trees.

No time. It was clear they would have to make their stand here. "Fight!" The clarion call of Glynda's voice demanded obedience.

That was the final impetus needed for Yang and Sky – the latter moved to stand beside Dove over Russel, and Yang rose and took up a stance beside the still shell-shocked Ruby.

Nora let out a fierce war cry, and knocked the head clean off the first Ursa stupid enough to charge at them – but it was only the beginning of a massive horde. Gunshots and battle-cries filled the air, merging with the wild howls and roars of the Grimm.

Yang punched out at a Beowolf mid-pounce, blasting away the beast before it reached her sister, and Weiss conjured an icy barrier along one of their flanks. Sky held back the attacking monsters with his long polearm while Dove knelt and fired his sword-gun into their ranks. Blake flickered about, making heavy use of her semblance, only appearing long enough to cut down a beast with a flick of her sword before vanishing once more.

Glynda telekinetically swatted away a lunging Ursa with a flick of her crop. "Miss Nikos! Defend your classmates! You are needed!"

"He's trying to say something!" Pyrrha screamed back urgently, ignoring her teacher. She lowered her ear closer to her partner's face. "Please, Shirou, please, stay with me…"

She did her best to make out the words he was trying to form.

Ruby, a short distance away, stared at the boy who had taken her on her first date as he struggled to utter what might have been his last words. It was _agonizing. _This couldn't be happening! And why did her eyes feel like they were _burning? _She felt a scream trying to bubble its way up and out of her – but she halted herself as Pyrrha raised her ear from Shirou's mouth, looking anguished – _oh **no**–_

"I think he's delirious!" Pyrrha shouted, distraught. "He thinks he's fine!"

His voice had come out weak, with an odd, metallic flanging effect to it. Pyrrha suddenly gasped, and withdrew her hand from Shirou's wound as something sharp sliced across her palm.

She looked down in horrified curiosity as she saw the hole in his armpit apparently stitching itself back together in a latticework of small blades.

"_Up," _he gasped out, his voice vibrating.

Had he patched up his _own lung_ with… swords?

Shocked, she and Ren helped him unsteadily to his feet as Glynda repelled a small flock of swooping Nevermore with her Semblance.

For the first time, Pyrrha scanned the scene – it didn't look good. Russel had made his way to his feet, eventually, but he, Sky, and Dove were being slowly overrun. Yang and Weiss, who stood over Ruby, were faring only slightly better. Nora – well, she was Nora, and still hadn't stopped her blood-chilling scream for an instant. Any Grimm that got too close to her was flattened, and Blake was able to thin the horde enough around her that they weren't yet to the point of being overwhelming – but even she couldn't keep it up forever.

Shirou shook off their steadying arms as he took a deep, rattling breath – although he offered Pyrrha a thankful nod as he did so. His arm lit up with streaks of green as she called back Akoúo̱ to her own and drew Miló with the other. Ren readied Stormflower. She noticed Ruby staring at them with new hope dawning in her bright silver eyes, and their team leader finally scrambled to her feet and deployed her weapon.

Still. Could they really hope to defeat this many Grimm? The tide seemed endless.

As if in answer to her despairing thought, a huge, lumbering form pushed its way through the trees – an Ursa Major, the bearlike form covered in jagged spikes of bone. She'd thought the Ursa that Nora had ridden during initiation had been huge – and this thing was fully _twice _that size. Still, she made to step forward resolutely, to protect her wounded partner to the last–

But he beat her to it, staggering forward on his own. His favorite sword – a royal blue hilt inlaid with gold, and a shining silver blade – coalesced in his hands, and was quickly brought up in a two-handed grip in front of him. He closed his eyes.

"_Golden Sword of the Victorious," _he rattled harshly. She stepped up beside him. Was he… praying? At a time like this? Behind her, there was a clatter of machine-gun fire as Ren took out a small group of Beowolves that were trying to sneak up on Professor Goodwitch, while the teacher herself telekinetically used an Ursa as a wrecking ball to bat down Nevermore from the sky.

"_Cleave the wicked," _Shirou continued. His blade began to glow with a soft golden light, and for a brief moment, the Grimm seemed to falter in their attack – before they pushed forward once more with renewed aggression.

Pyrrha stepped forward and slung her shield off to one side, bisecting a Beowolf Alpha that had been preparing to pounce before recalling it to her arm, even as she stepped forward and stabbed a charging Ursa. Behind her, a Beowolf's head disintegrated as the retort of a high-caliber sniper rifle rang out, an instant before it would have been able to attack Shirou. What was he _doing?_

Shirou's eyes opened, and he stepped forward with his right foot. He sank into a low lunge as he thrust the sword held in both hands forward with a shout – "_Caliburn!"_

A thin beam of concentrated light shot upwards from the tip of the sword at an acute angle to the ground. Faster than the eye could follow, it reached an apex and then harshly arced downwards, piercing through the Ursa Major's chest like the massive Grimm wasn't even there and plunging on past it into the ground.

And then came the _explosions._ There was a chain reaction of golden bursts of light emanating from the beam's impact point, as though someone had set off a hundred brilliant grenades, all at once, along the perimeter of their impromptu battleground. Each explosion was filled with incredible concussive force, but something more than that – they also each cast sparkling golden motes of light into the air that slowly drifted down like gently falling stars.

The explosions somehow curved around the students, and reached nearly three quarters of the way around them. Any Grimm unlucky enough to be caught in them was instantly shredded, along with the trees, many of which burst into shrapnel that further thinned the Grimm ranks. That alone might have been enough to turn the tide, as the horde was decimated five times over – but there was more. As the golden motes rained down around them, Pyrrha was filled with _Hope_.

To call the attack 'inspiring' would be an insult. Each and every Huntsman and Huntress present – including Glynda – instantly found their second wind – and their third, fourth, and fifth at the same time. The formerly hard-pressed students charged forward with renewed energy and vigor, tearing into the already crippled horde as a single unit like a hot knife through butter, all thoughts of defeat forgotten.

All of them except for Pyrrha, who let her weapons fall to the ground and darted forward to catch her partner as he collapsed. He smiled up at her as their classmates ripped apart what was left of the Grimm.

She held him close, starting to sob in relief. Pure hope combined with the crystallization of victory, and filled the void that despair had left within her.

"_I'm fine," _he said with a wide smile, his voice still undulating with the vibration of metal, even as he coughed up some blood.

"You're an idiot," she said, and squeezed him tighter.

o-o-o-o-o

The Bullhead pulled in for a hot landing at the Beacon docks.

Glynda literally _flew_ out of the pilot's seat, suspended by her Semblance, and rushed to the doors just as they opened. With a wave of her switch, two figures floated through aircraft's doors.

One Cardin Winchester, still out cold – literally, as he was still encased from toe to chin in a thick block of ice – and a loopy Emiya Shirou, who cartwheeled weightlessly through the door flanked by his three teammates. _"Whee!" _he weakly proclaimed, clearly deeply affected by blood loss and Aura depletion.

The three girls worked to steady his flight as Glynda strode off purposefully, the two levitating boys floating along behind her, and pulled out her Scroll.

A few rings later, her call was answered.

"_Ah, Glynda. Back already? Perfect, I was just about to call you. Could you let Mr. Emiya know that I wish to speak to him in my office?"_

"If you want to talk to him, you'll have to meet him in the infirmary," she snapped back uncharacteristically harshly.

"_...Ah. Dare I ask how the field trip went?" _Ozpin asked.

"He was attacked by another student in cold blood, Oz. Stabbed clean through the lung. The resulting negativity from the rest of the class brought down the biggest horde of Grimm I've seen since Mountain Glenn."

There was a pause, and then Ozpin let out a weary sigh. _"I'm sorry, Glynda. I'm glad you made it out alive. How… how many casualties?"_

"As in incapacitated?" she asked as she strode through the doors to the school. "Two. Emiya and the boy who stabbed him. As in dead? None, thankfully."

There was another long pause. _"... How?" _

She shot a glance backwards to see if the three girls were listening in, but they were still busy fussing over their friend, who seemed to be feebly asking why everyone was upside down. "Mr. Emiya has apparently been holding back in combat class, sir. Even suffering from a mortal wound, he pulled himself together long enough to take out over half the Grimm in a single attack, and it was enough to turn the tables."

"_Ah. He created a veritable storm of blades, then?" _

"W-what?" she said, confused. "No. He shot a beam of light out of a sword that caused a series of explosions throughout the ranks of the Grimm."

"_Oh." _

"Why… why did you think that other thing?"

"_No reason. So, he's still alive?"_

She sighed. "Yes, Oz." They were nearing the infirmary, now. "He somehow patched himself up, too. His Semblance is like nothing I've ever seen before."

"_Yes, he is a strange one, isn't he? Well, if he's all patched up, then would you send him up to my office?"_

"Ozpin, no!" she barked into her Scroll, momentarily gaining the attention of the boy's teammates. Luckily, they were quickly re-distracted when he began to babble out something about how he hadn't felt this tired since his little sister had enchanted him to sleep so that they could cuddle, which elicited a round of worried but tender "awws" from his audience.

"There is a difference between 'patched' and 'healed!'" she hissed more quietly into the receiver. "The boy is barely holding on as is!"

"_Well, I'm afraid it's quite urgent." _

Glynda repressed the urge to shatter her Scroll. "I'm hanging up," she growled as she stepped into the infirmary, collapsing the device and shoving it into a shallow pocket. "Peach!" she snapped.

A woman with tanned skin and peach colored hair, wearing a tight-fitting white lab coat and thigh high black boots, rose from behind her desk smoothly. "Glynda?"

"Blood transfusion!" Goodwitch barked, levitating Shirou into an empty bed, and the Cardicicle into another one as Professor Peach dashed off to fetch the necessary supplies.

"Miss Schnee. You may remove the ice, now," she suggested in the tone of a direct order. Startled, Weiss drew her rapier, and with a flourish, the ice cracked apart and fell to the floor.

Instantly, Glynda used her Semblance to grasp the various restraints attached to the hospital bed and deftly secured them around Winchester's limbs. They were heavily reinforced – even with Aura enhancing his body, the boy wouldn't be able to break free from these.

"I take it you don't have my sap?" Peach asked drily as she inserted an IV into Shirou's arm in a single practiced motion. The three girls hung back, looking on worriedly.

"Not in the mood, Peach," Glynda grumbled.

Peach nodded along in acceptance as she raised her patient's hand, and then paused and gasped. "Glynda… what is this?" she asked, staring down at the latticework of metal that held the boy together.

"Does it matter?" she shot back. "It kept him alive this long – now get it _out _of him and get to healing!"

"_Oh, I can do that," _the delirious boy chimed in with his oddly reverberating voice. "_Should I?"_

"Please do, Mr. Emiya," Glynda said after Peach nodded to her. In a flash of blue light, the framework of swords that held him together disappeared, and blood began to ooze out as the boy began to wheeze once more. His eyes rolled up as he finally slipped away from consciousness.

"Is he going to be okay?" Ruby demanded, taking a half step forward.

"Not to worry. He's in good hands," Glynda assured her as Peach lowered her hands to the boy's wound, whereupon they began to glow with Aura.

It wasn't even the woman's Semblance – she was just an incredibly skilled Aura manipulator. There was a reason she taught advanced Aura classes to the upper years in addition to being the school's resident head of medical staff. As the pinkish-orange light swept over Shirou's wound, the torn flesh slowly began to pull together.

"He'll make it," Professor Peach said, sounding confident. "What exactly happened to him?"

"The other idiot over there stabbed him," Glynda said bluntly with a gesture towards Cardin's bed.

Peach looked worried. "Why?"

"_That_ would be the million-lien question, wouldn't it?" a new voice chimed in as Ozpin strode through the door to the infirmary, cane in one hand and mug of hot cocoa in the other.

"S-sir? What exactly is going on here?" Peach asked, sounding confused.

"That, Professor Peach, is what I am trying to find out," Ozpin responded. "Well, girls? Pull up some chairs. We may be here for quite some time."

The rest of team RESN, startled, shared a few looks with each other before walking off and grabbing seats from around the room.

Weiss dragged over a chair first, and Ozpin sat down heavily in it. She looked like she was about to scowl at him, and then she realized that he was the headmaster, so she went to grab a second chair without protest.

A few minutes passed in silence as Peach continued to slowly heal Shirou's wounds and his four guests simply watched.

"Um, professor Ozpin?"

"Yes, Miss Rose?"

"Uh, why are you here?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Is it so unusual that I be concerned for an injured student?"

A hint of red graced her cheeks. "No, of course not! But, um, it still seems weird that you would just… sit here."

Ozpin nodded knowingly. "Ah, yes. Well, you see, I have reason to speak with him."

"Is it… about what happened?" Weiss asked.

"It very well might be," he answered noncommittally.

Weiss slumped a little and continued to stare at her friend. Her teammates did the same.

o-o-o-o-o

Of Shirou's four well-wishers, Ozpin was the first to fall asleep, which happened the moment his cup of hot chocolate was empty. He snored loudly, apparently.

Glynda had scowled at him and left the room, presumably to run the rest of the school in his absence, though she spared a more tender glance to the three worried girls before she left, as well as lifting the bed that still held Cardin's prone form and moving it off to a side room where it wouldn't offend his victims.

Pyrrha and Weiss had the discipline to stay awake over the hours that Shirou was out, and Ruby tried her damnedest, though her head repeatedly bobbed and fell before jerking back up.

After the first hour, Professor Peach had announced tiredly that he was stable, and that his own Aura would handle it from there. She'd also mentioned, slightly worriedly, that the golden energy seemed to be acting far more slowly that it had on the night of Roman's robbery.

The rest of Team RESN frowned at that. Wasn't Shirou's Aura more of a neon teal in color?

Regardless, Peach prescribed Aura boosters and then left to get some food and sleep – excessive Aura use was exhausting work.

A few hours after that, Shirou shot awake with a gasp. Ruby, who had been mid nod-off, jerked up as well with a startled squawk and fell back out of her chair, which was enough to rouse Ozpin from his slumber as well, albeit slightly more gracefully.

"Shirou!" Pyrrha exclaimed, smiling widely.

The injured boy noticed that it was a new smile – not the genuinely happy 'Hello again!' smile that she graced their team with every morning, nor the bashfully adorable 'I'm sorry!' smile she offered after every perceived slight. No, it was pure relief – the smile of a truly selfless person realizing that someone had been saved.

The closest thing he'd ever seen to it before had been Kiritsugu's, so many years before. The kind of smile he'd always thought one only encountered once in a lifetime – and yet, it was mirrored identically on Ruby and Weiss.

The three of them together was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, albeit somewhat bittersweet. It was the smile he'd been chasing ever since he first saw it, trying to find it for himself. Still, to find it again on his teammates was certainly the next best thing.

Oh, and Ozpin was there too, with a smile of his own, though it was more bemused than anything.

"You saved us," Ruby choked out as her eyes began to fill with tears.

Wait, that seemed wrong. Hadn't _they_ saved _him_? "Huh?" he said, expressing his entire thought process eloquently with but a single word.

Pyrrha remained silent, although happy tears began to form in her eyes as well as she smiled.

Weiss, however, tried and failed to hide her own smile behind a scowl. "We thought you were dead, and then that _we _were all dead too! I swear, when you're better, I'm going to kill you for m-making us... w-worry like that…" Her voice trailed off as she got caught up in the shared emotions and started to tear up as well.

"Hey, hey, don't worry," he tried to reassure them. "I'm gonna be fine. I heal really fast, remember?"

"Well, now. That may not be _entirely_ true, Mr. Emiya," Ozpin spoke up for the first time.

"According to Professor Peach, whatever force you have protecting you seems to be nearly depleted, I'm afraid," he continued.

Ruby looked horrified. "You mean…"

"No, Miss Rose. I am not referring to Aura," Ozpin bullshitted with a smile that seemed to say that he knew exactly what he was talking about.

He was a fairly skilled cold reader and liar, after spending so many years interacting with people, and he'd seen the worried, secretive glances shared between the girls at Peach's earlier mention of Shirou's Aura. He'd found that oftentimes, making the correct guess at the right time was the best way to enhance his 'mysterious old man' image – after all, people were far more likely to be fully open with him when they thought he already knew everything there was to know.

"W-what?" Ruby responded. Her teammates looked equally confused.

Shit, he'd been so sure that would work. He easily fought down a grimace and decided to double down on his gamble.

"Ah. I see young Mr. Emiya has not been as forthcoming with you as I had assumed he might be," he said in a voice practically dripping with mysterious wisdom, looking towards the boy in question.

Shirou frowned subtly.

_Jackpot._

"Where I come, we call it Prana. The energy of life," Shirou started to explain slowly. "But I don't think that's exactly what the headmaster is referring to, is it?"

Ozpin leaned back with a satisfied, knowing smile, still utterly confused, and shook his head. "No. It is not."

Shirou sighed. "I actually don't fully know myself what it is that heals me, to be honest," he admitted.

_Shit. _Ozpin gestured for the boy to continue without altering the expression on his face – he needed at least a little more to work with.

"I only started to notice it after I first met my last partner, Saber. Since then, no matter how wounded I was, I recovered fully and swiftly. I'm not sure why, but… it always feels like her Prana – or Aura – when I'm healing. I suppose with so much distance between us, whatever it was just… isn't working as well, anymore." He looked worried, but only slightly – like he was more worried about the deeper implications of what he'd just said instead of the fact that he was losing his ability to regenerate.

Ozpin leaned back and widened his smile slightly. "I had thought it might be something along those lines," he boldly lied.

The girls were silent, glancing between the two mysterious men. Shirou spoke up a moment later. "How?"

"You will find that I know a great many things, Mr. Emiya," he said confidently. It was about time for another probing gamble. "In fact, I happen to know that you're not from… _around here, _let us say." He put a subtle but noticeable stress on the two key words. An easy enough guess, especially given the differences in vocabulary, and he was hoping that he might learn where the boy actually _had _come from.

Shirou's eyes widened. "You… you're like _him, _aren't you?"

Ozpin raised an eyebrow and continued to smile, wondering what kind of person the conversation had made the boy think he was.

"You're a Wizard," Shirou said softly.

Only _literally _millennia spent learning how to control himself _perfectly _stopped Ozpin from openly displaying his shock. Of all the things Shirou could have said… he certainly hadn't expected him to be _right. _He ignored the questioning stares from Pyrrha, Weiss, and Ruby.

It had been quite a long time since he'd felt like this – like he was uninformed, in the dark, opposite someone who seemed to hold all the answers. He took some solace in the fact that due to his own skilled acting, Shirou probably felt the same.

"Mr. Emiya. I do believe this conversation has strayed somewhat beyond the bounds of what might be appropriate for an infirmary, don't you?" he asked, desperately hoping the boy would take the easy out.

Shirou did, his visage growing stony. "Agreed," he said.

"Excellent. I expect you to make a full recovery, Mr. Emiya. Once you have, I would greatly enjoy a discussion with you in my office. Naturally, your teammates will be welcome as well."

Shirou took a moment to look at the girls – none of whom seemed to be against the proposition. In fact, if Weiss or Pyrrha's expressions were anything to go by, they'd be positively livid if he tried to exclude them. Ruby, for her part, just looked concerned.

He turned back towards Ozpin. "Yeah. See you then."

o-o-o-o-o

**Hey, another chapter! Thanks to everyone for reading and reviewing, it's what keeps me pumping these out so quickly. A little bit dark this time – I mean, nothing too bad compared to canon RWBY or Fate, but still. Hopefully there was enough humor, fluffiness, smut, and action to offset the fact that Shirou got, you know, stabbed. Don't worry, he'll be fine! Just with a little less Avalon to help him out from here on.**

**Wow, lotta flak from guest reviewers on that last chapter because it didn't focus on Shirou! All I can say is stick with it, I suppose. If you want a story that ends up cohesive in the end, I can't help but put in a few chapters that describe things happening in the background – otherwise, when stuff happens due to the butterfly effect of Grail-kun and Lancer being dropped into Remnant alongside Shirou, nobody will understand why, and the story won't make any sense. **

**Speaking of which, for those of you who forgot, I **_**did **_**explain why Lancer is here… I mean, considering it's actually canon that he hopped into the rocket, I don't see what all the complaints there are about. And for the record, this will **_**not **_**turn into a Grail War. First of all, if it did, I would have to make it as preposterous as Carnival Phantasm did, which wouldn't fit the semi-serious tone I'm going for, and second of all I'm as tired of those as everyone else is. Lancer is here because he's supposed to be – I'm not just going to throw in random Servants at will. **

**Alright, by this point I'm resigned to this being a pretty long Author's Note. For those of you who are still wondering whether this fic is crack or seriousness… yes, it is. To both of those. I strive to include a whole lot of humor and ridiculous stuff, not to mention innuendo, even in the middle of serious stuff, but I also want to have an actual plot. Plus, I'm as big a fan of Shirou using cool Noble Phantasms as anyone, which needs a little bit of seriousness to really shine through. Hope that clears things up a little. **

**Once more, thanks to everyone! **


	11. Chapter 11

Shirou sighed as Ozpin left the room, looking back to the rest of his team.

"So, you all… probably have some more questions, huh?"

"That would be an understatement," said Weiss as she crossed her arms.

"What do you mean, 'Ozpin is a wizard?'" asked Ruby.

He opened his mouth to answer, but was cut off by Pyrrha. "You only heal swiftly because of your old partner?"

He tried to turn to her, but Weiss continued the assault. "What did he mean by '_around here?' _I thought you'd already told him that Fuyuki wasn't in Vale."

"_Laser sword?!" _Ruby blurted out.

"Umm… it's complicated?" He replied with the only statement he could think of that would answer everything at once, resulting in something uselessly vague. It didn't seem to satisfy the girls.

"Don't you trust us?" Ruby asked. There was no condemnation in her tone – she wasn't trying to guilt trip him into telling her. It was simply an honest question, and somehow, that just made it all the more effective.

He sighed again. "I do. The only reason I haven't been fully forthcoming with everything is because you wouldn't have believed me if I was. I promise, all the broad strokes I've told you have been true, there's just… more."

"It seems like there always is," Weiss said with a frown.

Shirou looked away. "Yeah. Sorry."

"You'll tell us everything when we meet with Ozpin, though?" Ruby asked hopefully.

"I will," he said, nodding. "You wouldn't believe me without him to confirm that I'm not just crazy, anyways."

"You could always try us," Pyrrha chimed in. "You might be surprised."

He offered a weak smile. "I'll tell you all everything as soon I'm out of here. I promise."

"Can't you tell us _anything _now? Please?" Ruby asked.

How the hell was he supposed to resist those wide, pleading eyes? "Well, I suppose Pyrrha's question doesn't have _too _unbelievable of an answer," he hesitantly answered. "Basically, I'd never been really seriously injured before I met her – which wasn't until after I'd been drawn into that tournament I told you about. I suppose my healing was always a part of what you could call Saber's Semblance, though I'm not sure 'Semblance' is a broad enough term to describe everything that she could do."

"So, why did it help before, but stop now?" Pyrrha asked.

"I suppose you can think of it like a battery," he said. "When I was near her, the battery would recharge swiftly. Now that there's so much distance between us, the rate of recharge is a very tiny fraction of what it was before. I suppose I've simply run out of charge." He instinctively looked down at the command spells tattooed onto his left hand – one had faded, after his premature usage of it early in the Grail War, but there were still two remaining.

There was still a faint trickle of prana back and forth along the link between himself and his Servant, and he could still feel Saber's energy rejuvenating him, however slightly.

Early after his arrival on Remnant, he'd considered trying to use one of his remaining Command Spells to attempt to summon Saber to his side – but, while extraordinarily powerful, he'd never heard of them being able to perform True Magic before, and to attempt to use both would sever the link between himself and Saber completely.

"I'm not completely sure, but as a guess, I'd say that I'm currently healing about a fifth as fast as a normal Huntsman would? If I went for a long enough time without being injured, I guess I'd build up enough of a charge to heal as rapidly as I did the first time, when I was injured with Ruby, but–"

"You'd _better _not be about to try and tell us that you think getting injured again is likely," Weiss growled.

Shirou nervously laughed. "Well, I mean, I _am _training to be a Huntsman…"

"Nope!"

He looked over to Ruby. "I mean, I am…"

"Nope!"

"No to me training as a Huntsman, or to getting injured again?"

"Nope!"

"I don't understand…"

"I think what Ruby is _trying_ to say," Weiss took over, "is that we aren't going to _let _you get hurt again. Cardin… took us all by surprise, to say the least, but that doesn't mean we can't take steps to stop it from happening again." Ruby nodded enthusiastically.

"Starting with not leaving you alone until _he _gets taken out of here," Pyrrha added with an uncharacteristically angry glare towards the room where Cardin was stashed.

Shirou frowned slightly. "I don't want you all to miss your classes…"

"Nope! If you get to skip classes, we're going to too!" Ruby said with a smile.

"Ruby! He was _stabbed! _This is not a vacation!" Weiss exclaimed, shocked.

"Does that mean you _won't _be staying here with Pyrrha and me?" Ruby challenged her partner.

Weiss averted her gaze, cheeks pinkening. "I- I didn't say that…"

"It's settled, then! No classes for any of us!" Ruby said smugly.

"Well, I'm not sure the teachers would _fully _support that course of action…" Pyrrha mused. "I'm sure we can work out a schedule so that there's always someone here, though."

Ruby frowned, but nodded. "I guess that makes more sense… I'm sure my sister's team wouldn't mind helping as well."

Shirou smiled. "Thanks, all of you. I'm sure I'll be fine, but it means a lot."

"It's the least we could do," Weiss replied. "After all, without you turning the tides, I don't think any of us would even be here."

"_Speaking_ of which," Ruby cut in, completely ignoring the solemnity of Weiss' statement. Her eyes were wide with excitement. "_Laser sword!?"_

Shirou smiled, and began to tell the tale of the Sword of Selection.

o-o-o-o-o

"I have called this assembly to inform all of you that a tragedy has struck our school."

Ozpin stood in Beacon's auditorium, before nearly the entirety of the student body and staff. Only a few were missing – the victim, his teammates, and the perpetrator of the incident in question.

"In a gross violation of everything that it means to be a Huntsman," he continued, "this morning, one of our students dishonorably attacked another with lethal intent. The wounds inflicted were grievous, and the victim barely managed to survive."

A shocked murmur went through the assembled audience. Many of them had heard the rumors, but for them to have been confirmed by the Headmaster himself…

Ozpin waited for the noise to die down before continuing. "Not only did this student attempt to murder a classmate, but his vile actions in the field generated enough negative emotion to attract a horde of Grimm and endanger the lives of everybody else present."

Angry whispers once more swept through the crowd, but Ozpin spoke over them before they could grow into something more. "Dove **B**ronzewing. Sky **L**ark. **R**ussel Thrush. Step forward."

The three boys hesitantly stood and made their way to the stage, under the curious, angry gaze of all of Beacon. Eventually, they stood in a nervous line before the implacable stare of their headmaster.

"The actions of your former leader, Cardin Winchester, reflect poorly on your entire team. He has been expelled from Beacon, and is currently being held by the police pending legal action."

The three Huntsmen in training wilted.

"However," Ozpin spoke once more after a slight pause, "by all reports, you were not complicit in your leader's actions. Indeed, you acquitted yourselves admirably in the aftermath of the event, helping to safeguard the lives of your fellow students. Henceforth, you will be Team BLR [Blackbird], under the leadership of Dove Bronzewing. With only three of you, you will need to put in more effort to keep up with your classmates. I expect you to succeed, and to overcome the shame that your previous leader has brought upon you."

Ozpin carefully noted the expressions of the three students, and nodded slightly to himself. Solemn, nervous, determined. It would do.

He couldn't help but feel somewhat responsible for the entire fiasco. Had he slipped up, somehow, in his initial assessment of Cardin?

He had seen the young man's pride and arrogance, to be sure. He had seen the hint of casual cruelty that could often be found in bullies and racists.

He had predicted that such a student – skilled, but not remarkably so – would serve as a stepping stone, a minor obstacle for one of his more promising students. An easy first obstacle to overcome, and one that might even learn the meaning of humility from such a defeat, growing into a more useful tool for the forces of good in the process.

He had _not_ seen a cold-blooded murderer.

He mentally sighed as he called the brief assembly to a close. Either his first impressions of Cardin were horrifically wrong, or something had changed. At the risk of being prideful or arrogant himself, he favored the latter explanation.

But what had changed?

And would it happen again?

o-o-o-o-o

Nora rolled into the infirmary like a thunderstorm.

"_Gah! _I can't believe they shipped him off to the police before I had a chance to _shatter every bone in his legs!_ Hey, Shirou!"

He waved as the rest of Team RVBY filed in behind the petite redhead. He'd only been alone for a few minutes before the reinforcements had shown up – true to their word, his team hadn't left him alone for an instant thus far, even sleeping at his side in the uncomfortable hospital chairs the previous night. Eventually, however, other responsibilities began to pile up, and they were forced to take a break. Luckily, RVBY was on call to take up the slack.

"How are you feeling?" Ren asked politely as he moved to stand beside Nora, who had flipped from fearsome to friendly on a dime.

"Pretty well," Shirou answered, raising his right arm testingly. He winced slightly, but it wasn't unbearable. "I should be out of here by the end of the week."

"I still can't believe Cardin did that," Yang said with a shake of her head. "It happened so fast – there was no way you could have gotten your Aura up in time. It could have happened to any of us." She grimaced, likely thinking of her sister.

Shirou tried to laugh it off. "Well, I did kind of give him a good reason to hate me. I doubt he would have targeted anybody else."

"Unless it was to hurt you through hurting your friends," Blake said quietly.

Shirou frowned. He hadn't thought of that. "I would protect them if it came to that."

Yang smiled. "Normally, I'd make some quip at that about how you didn't even succeed at protecting yourself, but then again, you did kinda pull our asses out of the fire afterwards, even with the whole perforated organs thing."

"It. Was. _Awesome! _I've never seen so many explosions in one place before!" Nora yelled, pumping her fists in the air. "And they were so pretty! Can you make them in pink? How come you've never shown us that move before?"

Shirou shrugged. "I hadn't needed to. You wouldn't waste one of your grenades on a Beowolf, would you? And if I used it in class, I would hurt someone. And… no, I don't think I can make it pink."

She pouted. "Shoot."

"Thanks, by the way," said Ren. "I thought we might be done for, for a second there."

"Really? You seemed calmer than anyone, even Professor Goodwitch," Shirou asked.

The boy simply shrugged. "Semblance," he explained with about as much emotion as ever.

"Ren's Semblance is awesome too!" Nora chimed in. "He can completely hide negative emotions! It makes him super calm when he fights, and he can even hide from Grimm!"

"I only wish I'd used it sooner," Ren said with just a hint of sheepishness. "Even I was taken by surprise in the moment. By the time I thought to use it, it was too late, and I could do little more than shield myself."

Shirou shook his head. "Not your fault. You did really well, all of you."

Yang snorted. "Says the guy who killed hundreds of Grimm while bleeding out."

"Which I wouldn't have been able to do if you all hadn't risen to the occasion," Shirou argued with a smile. "Believe me, I've already had this conversation with my team. The attack took a lot out of me – if you all hadn't been around before and after, I never would have had the chance to use it."

"You're something else, you know that?" Yang smiled down at him.

"Has your team been taking good care of you?" Blake hesitantly asked to fill the momentary lull in conversation.

"Uh, yeah! Of course they have," he answered. "They've been great."

Blake smiled at his response, as if she'd expected it, and pulled out a small notebook from some hidden pocket. She took a step back from the rest of the group as she began to write in it.

Yang rolled her eyes. "She's been doing that a lot, lately," she explained for Shirou. "She won't show us what she keeps writing about, and it seems like the strangest things suddenly inspire her."

"...Masterpiece," Blake mumbled almost inaudibly, her eyes shining strangely. "_Sponge bath_…" she whispered even quieter.

"Anyways," their team leader spoke up with a small smile, "most of us are just stopping by here to say hello. And thank you, of course. We won't disturb your rest much longer."

"I'm the designated babysitter!" Yang smiled widely. "I'll keep you company until your team gets back."

"Bye, Shirou!" Nora yelled, skipping over to his bedside and quickly pulling him into a bone-crushing hug before anyone could stop her. Luckily, still gun-shy from the recent assassination attempt, he managed to quickly Reinforce himself, so the spontaneous affection was only slightly painful instead of downright injurious.

"Sorry," Ren apologized for his teammate as he tried to pry her off of Shirou. "And this is why we'll be leaving."

"It's alright," Shirou said, still smiling. "Thanks for visiting. It's good to see you're all doing alright."

Blake pulled her attention away from her notebook, giving him a polite smile and a small bow. "Get well soon," she encouraged. He nodded back in return.

Yang made herself comfortable in one of the nearby chairs as the rest of her team made their way out of the room.

It seemed like she wanted to say something, but wasn't sure where to begin, so for a while they simply sat in silence.

"I tried your cookies," Yang eventually blurted out, somewhat awkwardly.

"Ah, good. I hope you enjoyed them?" he half said, half asked.

She nodded, slightly bolstered, and smiled at him. "Yeah. It was great. You'll be making them again sometime?"

He smiled back and raised an eyebrow. "Are you kidding? You know Ruby's on my team, right? Cookies are going to be a weekly occurrence, I'm pretty sure. If not more often."

Yang laughed lightly. "Yeah, I should have figured."

She was silent for a moment more, before continuing on a different tangent. "How did you do it?"

"Hmm? Like I said, my Semblance..."

"Nah, not that," she cut him off and shook her head, laughing again. "At this point, we all just agree that your Semblance is stupidly good and leave it at that." She trailed off, and her tone grew more solemn. "I mean, how did you manage to get up and keep going, even in the state you were in?"

He didn't have to think for even a moment before answering. "You all were in danger. I had to protect everyone."

She met his gaze, looking slightly sad and bewildered. "And I'm happy you did, but… you said that attack took a lot out of you. You fainted the instant after you used it. I can't even imagine how much Aura you must have had to pump into your Semblance for that kind of effect."

He nodded, not really sure where she was going with that.

"Even though you knew you were wounded, close to fatally – knew that you might _need_ that Aura to heal, you still put it all into that attack."

He nodded again, still confused.

She sighed in exasperation. "You could have died! You almost did! And Ruby said you're still not healing as fast as you should be!"

"Well, it was kind of the only option I had at the time that I thought might work," he hesitantly explained. "And it did, right?"

She stared at him, searching his eyes for something immaterial, and frowned. "You didn't even consider the fact that you might die, did you?"

"Not really," he admitted easily. "There were other things on my mind."

Her frown deepened. "I can't tell whether you're brave or stupid."

"I don't really think it's either of those," he said with a thoughtful frown of his own. "I just thought that I needed to protect everyone. Even if it killed me, it would be better if the rest of you didn't die too."

"Ruby would have been devastated," Yang pointed out as she leaned back and crossed her arms. "The rest of your team, too."

"Devastated is better than dead," he retorted. He saw where she was coming from, but really…

"Ruby's mom – _our _mom – died, when we were kids," Yang said quietly. "Neither of us took it very well, and that was _without_ it happening in front of our eyes. If Ruby saw you die right in front of her, when I say she'd be devastated, I mean she'd be _broken."_

He looked away, finally feeling a little guilty.

Yang sighed again. "Look, sorry, I don't mean to get on your case. You're right – it worked, after all. We're all here safe and sound, so I can't get too mad. Just don't make it a habit, okay?"

He met her lilac eyes once more, but his smile was a little hollow. "I can't promise that. If it means saving someone else, I'm more than happy to risk myself."

Yang huffed in mixed disapproval and amusement. "Well, I can see why she likes you, at least. You really _are _something else."

"Likes me? Who, Ruby?" Shirou asked, taken aback.

Yang frowned again, but this one seemed a little more dangerous. "Yeah, who else would I be talking about?"

Shirou felt himself blush slightly. "Wait. When you say likes, do you mean, like, she _likes-_likes me?"

She stared at him for a moment before slowly lowering her forehead into both of her palms.

"Are you related to Nora or something?" She grumbled, mostly to herself. "I swear, if I have to hear 'not _together-_together' one more time… It would explain the explosions, too..."

She raised her eyes once more, her gaze _barely_ managing to avoid being accusatory. "Listen. I'd already pegged you for being dense, so I'm not going to _immediately_ hurt you."

He chuckled nervously, and made ready to Reinforce himself again just in case.

"And let me just make it clear that you are _not _to let Ruby know that I'm telling you this, am I understood?" the blonde brawler continued.

Shirou nodded readily, still not liking the veiled bloodlust he saw in her eyes.

"Yes. She _likes-_likes you, you eight-year old," Yang said, once more exasperated. "You share her interests and hobbies, you've saved her life a couple of times now, and you helped her rediscover a piece of her childhood she thought was lost forever. You're one of the few guys who've ever shown any interest in her before, _and _I don't even disapprove of you, at least compared to other guys." She crossed her arms again. "So at least for her sake, stop getting hurt, alright?"

He was conflicted. If it meant weighing his life against saving people, the answer was clear. But when it was between saving people and making people happy?

"I'll… try," he managed to get out.

"Good. And you'd _better _not mess with my sister's heart, either. The second she's unhappy with you is the second you're no longer protected from me," she said with a smirk.

Well, that, at least, was something he could get behind. His eyes shone. "You're right, Yang."

He clenched his fists. "I'll make everyone happy!" he declared with determination.

o-o-o-o-o

_Ding._

The elevator reached the top of Beacon's tallest tower, and Team RESN stepped out into Ozpin's office.

It was a two-tiered room, entirely surrounded by windows, but for where some of them were obscured by the massive gears of the clocktower. Even so, there were enough vantage points that the entirety of Beacon could be easily surveyed. No matter which direction was faced, the view was excellent. Yet more gears whirled overhead, visible through the transparent ceiling.

Ozpin himself sat behind a similarly gear-themed ornate desk, hands steepled in front of him. To his right sat a steaming mug, matched by four others on the opposite side of the crescent-shaped table.

"Welcome, students. I've been expecting you," Ozpin said calmly as they entered his domain.

"Uh, yeah," Ruby said, tone _maybe _a little too familiar for use with the headmaster. "You _just _told us to meet you here."

He ignored any potential slight the girl may have offered.

"So I did," he said with a mysterious smile.

It had taken Shirou nearly a full week to be released from the infirmary. He was still a little sore, but he had been cleared for active lessons once more. He had only been out for about an hour before his team had received Ozpin's summons.

"Please, sit down," Ozpin continued, gesturing towards the array of chairs on the other side of his desk.

The four students sat in silence, Shirou slightly nervously, and his teammates in anticipation – finally, the moment of truth!

Ozpin let the silence stretch on until he felt the scene was sufficiently dramatically tense. "Well, then, Mr. Emiya. When last we spoke, I believe that you were about to explain – in full – exactly where you're from, and how it came to be that you have come to Vale."

Shirou sighed, and met his teammates' eyes one by one, speaking to them instead of Ozpin. "Everything I've said is true. I come from a place called Fuyuki. Recently, there was a tournament, fought between seven pairs of partners, plus one contender from the previous tournament ten years ago. The prize was an incredibly powerful relic."

Ozpin slipped naturally into the pause after his last sentence. "A relic, you say?"

He raised an eyebrow in what appeared to be mild interest – which, unbeknownst to his students, was the approximate equivalent of a shocked gasp for the ancient wizard. "And which relic was it that you fought over, hmm?"

"...The Holy Grail," Shirou answered.

Well, that wasn't really on the list of relics that Ozpin had expected from the boy who seemed to know so much.

It was almost enough to make him assume that it was merely a coincidence of vocabulary – but with the sheer _gravitas _Shirou had mentioned it with, not to mention the clear allusion to divinity… it wasn't worth the risk. And he had tasted its presence himself, hadn't he, on more than one occasion?

"Interesting," he said with a small, disarming smile. "And if you were to describe this relic using one word, one that most accurately encompassed its powers, what would it be?"

Was it Choice, Knowledge, Creation, or Destruction? Had one of his academies been pilfered from under his nose? Or was it truly something else?

Shirou took a moment to think about the unexpected question. "Desire," he finally answered, somewhat hesitantly. "It was said to be an all-powerful wish granting device. Every sixty years, there would be a tournament held in Fuyuki, and the winner would be able to use it to grant any wish they desired."

Ozpin fought the urge to furrow his brow and scowl. That _did _sound like a relic. An annoyingly-long time limit to make use of incredibly strong powers was pretty typical. Instead, he simply hummed thoughtfully. "I see. Please, continue."

"Well, at the end of the tournament, I… tried to destroy it."

Foolish – the relics were indestructible, of course.

"I… failed, and instead, I think I accidentally used it. My wish was to become a hero – to save people. The Grail took the form of a ship, and brought me here…"

Shirou paused for a moment, and then sighed again, before forcing out the end of his sentence. "To what I'm pretty sure is a different world entirely."

For a moment, there was silence.

Ruby's jaw dropped. "You're an alien?!"

The outburst thankfully seemed to defuse some of the tension and solemnity that had built up, and Shirou smiled at the excitable girl. "Not quite. More like a different dimension than a different planet, I think. I'm as human as you are."

Ozpin's mind raced. Was Shirou lying? It didn't seem that he was. Could he be mistaken, somehow? Well, he at least believed his own words, though that didn't necessarily make them correct. And he himself _had _seen the rocket, which mysteriously disappeared, leaving only this boy at the impact site…

"And where is this relic now?" He asked, still maintaining his calm facade, before the girls could question Shirou further.

"Well, it kind of just… does what it wants?" Shirou said weakly. "I'm not exactly sure how, but it kind of has a mind of its own – and it left right after it dropped me in the forest."

Well, that cinched it. He _had _to be speaking of a relic – each of the four was inhabited by a powerful, sentient spirit, although none of them, to his knowledge, were capable of traveling of their own accord.

What did this _mean? _

A fifth relic, capable of granting wishes? A divine artifact, unbound by the laws of this world's gods – so evidenced by seemingly breaking through the barriers of this very _reality _with ease? One that was on the loose, acting according to its own will?

A student with strange, powerful abilities, falling practically into his very lap, after making a wish to become a hero?

Ozpin found himself swamped by completely unfamiliar feelings as he tried to make sense of the nigh unbelievable tale. No, not unfamiliar – just... forgotten. Feelings of wonder, uncertainty, excitement – maybe even hope. When was the last time he had felt such thing?

Was this what he needed to win the war against Salem?

"But… you knew all of this already, didn't you, Professor?" Shirou asked.

"I suspected," Ozpin lied with a small smile to mask his true feelings, and took a sip of his hot chocolate to stall for time.

Shirou nodded, accepting it at face value, before asking another question.

"Was it you who blew up the moon?"

Ozpin _almost _choked. He barely managed to swallow his scalding drink before clearing his throat.

"No, Mr. Emiya. It was not."

"Oh. Sorry, I just assumed," he said naturally.

"_Why?_" Weiss spoke up for the first time, looking absolutely flabbergasted. "I mean, this has _all _been hard to believe, but… where did _that _come from?"

Ozpin internally agreed wholeheartedly with the flustered heiress.

"Well, a wizard from my world blew up a copy of the moon, when the moon vampire tried to crash it into the Earth," Shirou explained, as if he were merely discussing the weather. "With how much Ozpin knew about me and how I was from another world, I assumed he was a wizard too, so I thought it made sense.""

Or maybe the boy was just clinically insane.

"Wizards don't exist…" Weiss said. It seemed like even she couldn't tell whether that was something she believed, or if it was just what she hoped.

"... The _moon vampire?" _Pyrrha mumbled, having chosen to focus on a completely different, yet still very valid, problem with the boy's explanation.

"That's so cool!" Ruby said in awe.

Ozpin actually externally sighed. "I am afraid, Ms. Schnee, that you are not entirely correct. But before we go down that particular rabbit hole… this Relic of Desire was involved in your recent injury, was it not?"

Shirou nodded. "Trace, On." He extended one hand and materialized an ordinary looking kitchen knife, looking at it with a faint grimace of distaste.

"Is that…" Pyrrha started to ask, her eyes widening in realization.

"The knife Cardin used to stab me, yeah. I've seen its type before." He readied himself for a long explanation. "Okay, so, as I understand it, many years ago, some people did something really stupid, and kind of… _corrupted_ the Grail. Since then, when it grants wishes, it does so in a way that usually causes chaos, pain and suffering, especially for the maker of the wish."

Ozpin frowned ever so slightly, a hint of sadness entering his eyes. The corruption of this relic reminded him uncomfortably of Salem's own – how the woman he had once loved had fallen to darkness.

"To grant powerful wishes, like I said, it requires time to build up power, and the tournament itself, which acts as a kind of ritual. In the meantime, to… amuse itself, I suppose, it grants minor wishes instead, using the bare minimum of effort – by which I mean it likes to hand out knives." He scowled once more at the ordinary looking blade. "If I had to guess, based on this knife's name? Cardin wished for revenge on me for humiliating him, and to be feared again like he was before. The Grail gave him a knife and planted a suggestion, and he took care of the rest."

"That's terrible!" Pyrrha exclaimed, eyes wide in horror. "He would stoop to murder over something so childish?"

Shirou shook his head. "He probably wouldn't have, without the Grail. Especially for those with weak wills, the Grail's suggestions are pretty compelling. They can convince you to do things that you otherwise never would. That's not to say he didn't fantasize about it, maybe, but… lots of people imagine doing bad things sometimes. He would never have acted on those fantasies without the push the Grail provided."

Ozpin had continued to think while Shirou explained – one particular tidbit of the story stood out as pertinent – one that, in all the confusion, that Shirou and his teammates had seemingly overlooked.

Cardin was not simply made fearsome by his wish, but rather given the opportunity to become fearsome through his own actions. Shirou, too, had not been _made _a 'hero,' but merely been granted the opportunity to become one.

By his own admission, following the path laid out by this relic would likely result in his own pain and suffering. Indeed, he had already nearly been killed twice – and one of those occasions was due to the direct influence of the relic.

Certainly, it would be in Shirou's best interest for Ozpin to prevent the boy – his _student_, no matter how bizarre his circumstances – from attempting to fulfill his goal.

But… this boy, and this fifth relic, were new pieces on the playing field. Pieces that only _he _was aware of – pieces that his enemies would never expect. And sometimes… well, any chess player would be able to tell you that if through sacrificing a knight, you could capture an enemy queen, then it would be a fool's play not to.

No. Ozpin would not dissuade Emiya Shirou from trying to become a hero.

He would encourage it.

"Students – though I know this is all hard to believe, it is my sincere belief that everything your teammate has said is true," he declared, accompanied by an appropriately heavy sigh. This one, at least, was a controlled part of his act.

"I am sure that hearing all of this is quite confusing for you. There is much more for you to learn, eventually… but it is not yet the proper time." He used his 'old wizard making a prophetic statement' voice – students rarely questioned him when he did that.

"For the time being," he continued, "let it be sufficient to know that this relic is real – and as you have seen for yourselves, it is quite dangerous. I believe that each one of you will have an extremely important role to play in the events to come – I highly recommend that you avoid this relic as best you can, and report any suspicions of its activity to me immediately. For now, your priorities should be simple.

"Protect each other. Learn how to work well together as a team. Absorb everything that Beacon has to teach you."

He took a moment to look around the semicircle. He nodded slightly in approval. Yes, this team… a powerful warrior from another dimension, the heiress to Remnant's most influential company, the champion that he was already considering to take up the role of the next Fall Maiden, and all of them led by a Silver-Eyed Warrior…

In the previous generation of Huntsmen, Team STRQ had been his chosen pawns – and they had been one Silver-Eyed Warrior leading a pair of bandit children and a playboy.

They were all undoubtedly skilled, to be sure, but if he had been able to mold _them _into such a powerful force… then what might he be able to do with the students in front of him?

"In time, when you are ready… your team may well change the world." He lowered his glasses and smiled somewhat conspiratorially. "And in the meantime, I will expect at the very least a good showing in the Vytal Festival tournament at the end of this year."

Perfect – that had garnered a few smiles. "Of course, what we have discussed here today should not leave this room. I'm sure you all understand the necessity of keeping such things a secret."

He received four solemn nods.

o-o-o-o-o

"You're kidding me, Yang said flatly.

"No, really!" insisted Ruby. "Shirou actually is a hero from another dimension who was brought to Remnant by some kind of magical relic of desire! I know it sounds crazy, but even Ozpin agreed it was true!"

Team RESN sat in Team RVBY's dorm room, where their leader had taken them immediately following their meeting with the headmaster.

"Don't tell anyone though, it's a secret!" Ruby added happily.

Blake stared at her silently and began to slowly reach for her notebook.

"Do you have to say it like that, Ruby?" Shirou asked. "When it's put that way, it's kind of embarrassing."

"Is this why your Semblance is so powerful?" Yang demanded.

"Kind of," he nodded. "I was taught to use Aura differently, there."

"Is this why your food tastes so good?"

"No, that's just lots of practice."

Her eyes narrowed. "So, you don't have any kind of freaky desire-powers because of this?"

Off to one side, Blake nodded rapidly as she continued to write, but Shirou shook his head. "No, it's not that kind of desire, it just granted _my _desire by bringing me here."

"Hmph." Yang crossed her arms threateningly.

"Ruby? Are you really sure the first thing we should be doing with this secret is immediately sharing it?" Weiss asked in disapproval.

"Actually, Ozpin probably expected this," Shirou responded for her. "He seems to know everything, right? I'm sure if he _didn't _want Ruby to immediately go tell Yang, he wouldn't have told her anything in the first place."

"Hmm, I suppose that does make sense," Weiss conceded, thoughtfully stroking her chin.

"Am I really that predictable?" Ruby frowned and turned to Pyrrha.

The tall girl only giggled in response.

"This certainly does seem difficult to believe," said Ren. "But if Ozpin says it's true… don't worry. Your secret is safe with us."

"Thanks, all of you," Shirou smiled.

"It's the least we could do after all you've–"

"I'll keep quiet if you keep making breakfast!" Nora yelled, throwing an arm over Ren's shoulder and clamping a hand over his mouth.

"Deal," Shirou reached over to shake her free hand without his smile faltering in the least.

"So basically," Pyrrha said, "we should just be watching for people… acting strangely, and carrying kitchen knives? It sounds so silly when I say it like that, but after Cardin…"

"We'll be on the lookout," Ren said with a stoic nod as he finally wrested his way from Nora's grasp.

Shirou nodded as well. "That's all Ozpin asked for." He smiled. "Well, that, and that we train. Who wants to go see Professor Goodwitch about reserving the combat rooms?"

Nora and Ruby cheered in unison. Yang cracked her knuckles. "Oh, you're on, alien-boy."

Shirou sighed, but he was still smiling. "Seriously, not an alien. Just a human from a different place."

"If we win, it's proof you're an alien!" Nora declared as if it were fact.

"Well, we can't let that happen," Pyrrha said with a smile of her own.

Weiss nodded her agreement, for once indulging in the silliness. "I will _not _be known for being the girl on the same team as an… alien," she said in mock seriousness.

Ruby bore a wide grin as well. "Let the better team win!"

o-o-o-o-o

**Hey, been a little bit longer than usual, for not even that long of a chapter – sorry! Pretty busy lately.**

**With that, at just under 100k words, I'd like to declare the end of what I've been viewing as a sort of introductory arc. A whole lot of exposition, trying to reconcile the fact that I'm working with two very different worlds, hopefully mixed in with a fair amount of world building, character development, fluff, humor, plot foreshadowing, and action. Hope you all enjoyed it so far!**

**Thanks a ton once again for all the reviews and messages, and keep them flowing! Talking with people about this story helps keep the creative process going. If you see parts of chapters that you think might have been influenced or inspired by your reviews or messages, you're probably right – you know who you are, and thank you!**

**It'll probably be another few weeks before I can update again – I have a few things to deal with that will keep me pretty busy for the time being. In the meantime, though, because I've informally finished an arc, and to commemorate what I personally see as a pretty big accomplishment (you guys are awesome, despite publishing this story just a little over a month ago, it's on the first page of Fate/RWBY crossovers whether you sort by reviews, favorites, or follows!), I've been thinking about commissioning some art for it!**

**If you, too, would like to see some cool art for this story, shoot me a private message and let me know what your favorite scene or scenes have been thus far! It won't necessarily be an official vote, per se, but if it seems like a lot of people reach a consensus on a scene they'd like to see illustrated, I'll be sure to take it into consideration!**

**Thanks again!**


	12. Chapter 12

"Welcome to Tukson's book trade, home to every book under the sun," a large man with thick, dark sideburns called out as he made his way out of the store's back room. "How may I – oh, Blake, it's you!"

The Faunus girl smiled and gave him a tiny wave. "Hi, Tukson. It's been a while."

"It certainly has," he chuckled as he put down a large stack of books. "How have you been?"

"I'm doing well. Beacon has been good so far."

"I'm happy for you," Tukson said with a smile, but Blake didn't miss the hint of something else in his eyes. Not quite envy, not for a friend like her, but... almost there.

"Soon, right? Just a month or so?" she asked, her tone reassuring. They both knew what she was talking about – his upcoming defection from the White Fang.

He nodded, his smile a little more hopeful. "That's right. Just a month. Stopping by to stock up on books one last time? The next installment of that series you like came out recently."

She blushed lightly even as her eyes lit up with minor excitement. "Well, that too, of course. But actually, I have another reason to be here today too. It's kind of a… personal request, and I don't really know who else to turn to. You're the only person I know who can help me." She looked down at the floor, slightly embarrassed.

Tukson raised an eyebrow, _really _hoping that wasn't what it sounded like. Maybe he shouldn't have been selling erotic novels to young, impressionable girls after all.

Luckily, she cleared up the confusion quickly. She pulled a binder from behind her back, which seemed to be full of at least a couple hundred pages of paper, and plopped it down heavily onto the counter.

"How do I publish a book?" She asked in a rush, her cheeks now fully red.

"Oh, what's this?" He smiled widely in surprise as he reached for it. "Finally decided to graduate from reader to writer, hmm?"

"Something like that," she nodded, averting her eyes as he flipped open the cover.

"The Sword of Love…" he mused as he took in the title page. "By Ebony Nightshade." He looked up at her, eyebrow raised once more.

"Well, I don't want people to know it was _me_ who wrote it, obviously," she said, only barely managing to sound aloof, instead of a stuttering, embarrassed mess. "Adam could find me. Or my friends…"

"You don't think it's a little… on the nose?" he probed further.

She shook her head. "It'll be fine, I think."

"Hmm. Well, how much time have you got today? I'd have to read a bit first before I can tell you whether or not it's good enough to send on to an editor. Not everyone can write a bestseller on their first try, you know."

"You know me," Blake said with another small smile. "I'll probably be here for an hour at least reading, if that's alright with you."

"Of course. Anything for my favorite customer."

She wandered through the store, taking in the scent of the old books. Tukson's had always been one of her favorite hideouts in Vale. It was dark, cool, and for the most part, empty. When he said she was his favorite customer, she had a feeling that there wasn't much competition.

That was probably another part of the reason Tukson wanted to leave. He _couldn't _be making much of a legitimate profit. Anti-faunus racism, while it might not be as blatant as it once was, still subtly influenced Vale – why visit a tiny Faunus-run bookshop when there were larger corporate chains, in better neighborhoods, run by humans?

It was that that had originally driven him to the White Fang – he was looking for a voice to protest with, a place where he could find support. Through them, he'd managed to keep afloat, but at the risk of being asked for progressively more illegal favors. He'd been uncomfortable with it from the start, but eventually it had reached a tipping point, and he'd decided to leave – just like she had. To be fair, his tipping point was probably somewhat below being told to blow up a train filled with innocent passengers, but still. Maybe that just meant he was a better person than her. She'd miss him, but she'd be happy when he finally moved to Vacuo, out from under the White Fang's thumb.

Inevitably, she found herself drawn to her favorite section of the store – the romance novels. Rows upon rows of medium-length paperbacks, their covers plastered with pictures of scantily clad muscular men and swooning women. Paradise.

Sure enough, the shiniest new installment of the Ninjas of Love series was waiting for her, at the end of a long line of its siblings. _These_ were a step above the rest – the kind of quality novel that not only featured an engaging plot, but also a fold-out laminated illustration page at the climax (in more ways than one) of each story, providing an unparalleled aid to fully imagining the scene.

It was a dangerous gamble, however.

Did it enhance her enjoyment of the novel? Absolutely. Did it also terrify her that if one of her teammates were to find one of the many books she had sequestered around the room, that fold-out would likely be the first thing they saw? Definitely. Was that terror part of the thrill of having them there in the first place? She would have to admit that yes, that was true too.

She pulled the book from the shelf, resisting the temptation to flip to the 'action' scenes immediately. She knew from experience that they would be far more enjoyable if she read her way to them naturally – and in a slightly more private place than a bookstore. She curled up in one of Tukson's few armchairs and began to immerse herself in the story. Tukson himself leaned on his counter as he pored over her manuscript.

An indeterminate amount of time passed – enough for the plot to begin to get interesting – before the bell over the door to Tukson's shop let out a light tinkle. Her bow twitched as her sensitive ears picked up two pairs of footsteps entering.

She flicked up her eyes from the book as the footsteps passed by, catching a glimpse of the customers through the rows of shelves as they approached the front.

Two men, both in casual clothes, both Faunus. One had a scruffy goatee and a small pair of goat's horns atop his head, and the other had sharp features, his spiky brown hair clearly containing several white feathers.

The feathered man somehow noticed her as well, his yellow eyes flicking down the same row that she was watching him from and meeting hers.

She was pretty sure he hadn't heard her, or seen any movement. Paranoia, then. Checking the whole store, meticulously.

She continued to sit, but tensed slightly, ready to move at the slightest hint of recognition – but none came. They kept walking.

"Hello, welcome to Tukson's, home to every book under the sun! How can I help you?" She heard Tukson say with fake cheer.

Much quieter, below what a human at her distance would have been able to hear, she heard a male voice respond in a whisper. "Cut the crap, Tukson. And get that girl out of here."

There was a pause.

"Hey, uh, Ebony?" Tukson called out.

She rose and made her way around the shelves, taking in the two men standing before the storeowner. "Yeah?" She kept her voice innocent, naive.

"Why don't you go get a coffee or something? I might be busy for a bit. You can come back later if you want, and I should be done."

"Yeah, ok," she nodded slowly, and turned to leave, noting how the bird Faunus' eyes tracked her as she moved. She could feel them on her back all the way to the door.

"Could you dim the lights for me on the way out?" Tukson asked as she reached for the door.

She nodded, and ran her hand over the panel near the windows, making them nearly opaque. _Nice work, Tukson,_ she thought. That would make this much easier.

She threw the door open wide, and stepped out into the street, turning sharply to the right and moving so she was in front of the blackened window. Out of sight, she immediately spun, looked back through the door as it swung closed, and activated her Semblance. Anyone watching her on the street would have seen her leave the store and then immediately vanish, leaving only a hazy copy of herself that quickly disappeared.

Anyone inside the store would see nothing, as she flashed silently behind one of the shelves near the front of the store. She silently padded around them, getting closer to the front of the store as she eavesdropped. It all happened fast enough that she barely missed anything.

"You've been holding back on us lately," a gruff voice growled. It must have been the other one, the goat Faunus.

"Some people are starting to doubt your loyalty to the cause, brother," the bird Faunus continued.

"Listen, guys," Tukson answered, voice calm. "It's not that. I'm doing what I can, but this high-profile stuff you've been asking from me recently, it's just too risky. I have a store to run – if I was caught, I'd lose everything."

"You wouldn't even _have _a store if it weren't for us," Goat snapped back. "And recently, you haven't been paying your debts properly."

"I told you, if you need information, I'm your man, but–"

"Not good enough," Bird cut him off. "You're a mediocre information dealer, at best. We need boots on the ground."

Tukson only sighed in response.

"One week, Tukson. Sunday night. The docks," Bird continued, tone menacing. "Be there. This is your last chance."

He was silent for a long time before answering.

"I can't," he said with resigned finality.

"You will," growled Goat.

"Or you will learn that the White Fang does not tolerate betrayal," Bird finished with a hiss.

Blake heard them both move to leave, and ducked back further out of sight until they passed. She waited until the windows were undimmed and she heard the sound of the door slamming shut before she revealed herself, silently approaching Tukson where he still leaned over the counter, staring down at it in thought.

"Are you ok?" She asked, not sure where to start when it came to comforting him.

He let out another long sigh before straightening up. "Yeah. Not the first time they've come around, trying to strong-arm me into doing their dirty work. They've already cut off my funding. I'm sorry to say, but that's probably the last new one I'll be able to get my hands on," he said, gesturing towards the book that Blake hadn't even realized she was still holding onto.

She looked down at it and frowned. "Dirty work? I thought the Fang was barely active in Vale – Adam and I were the only agents operating here, last time I checked. What changed?"

"A lot," he said grimly, but made no move to elaborate.

"Tukson… what's happening at the docks on Sunday night?"

"I don't want to tell you," he said bluntly. "Don't get involved, Blake. Not now that you have a new life."

Her eyes narrowed. "You know I won't accept that."

"I know, and you're a damned fool for it," he said with more bitterness than she'd ever heard in his voice before. "I'm already angry enough that you heard what you did, _without_ voluntarily telling you more. I'll be fine. You should worry about yourself."

"No." She crossed her arms, the very picture of stubbornness. "It's personal."

"Blake," he growled, "you _made _it. You're _out._ When I get out of here, I am never going to even get _close_ to the name 'White Fang' for the rest of my life. I advise you to do the same."

"You can't stop me," she said quietly. "I already know enough."

"I know. Just, please…" he trailed off. "I don't want you on my conscience too."

She looked down, neither of them meeting each other's eyes, and waited in silence.

Eventually, Tukson sighed again. "Hey, let's get back to business, alright? This is good, kid. It's really good." He rapped on the cover of her binder with his knuckles.

Her eyes shot back up to his. "R-really? You think so?"

He nodded, a faint smile returning to his rough features. "I only had the chance to skim it, but from what I've seen? Better than half the drivel on that shelf, easy," he said as he gestured towards the romance section. "Probably more than half. I mean, there's a plot, for one thing. The characterization I read so far has been good too – it seems like you've put a ton of thought into their personalities. Hell, you could practically be writing about friends, not just made up characters."

Blake blushed slightly.

"Interesting choice on the romance as well. You don't see a lot of harem style books these days – generally not as popular with a mostly female audience. If anything, it's usually two men vying for the attention of one woman. But… on the other hand, this is fresh, different. It'll stand out. And if a reader can't identify with a heroine, well, there are still two others to try to self-insert as."

She made to say something, but he held up a hand to forestall her.

"Ah-ah, don't lie. I know you're about to say it's not about pretending you're the main heroine, but come on, we both know there's a reason your favorite genre is ninjas."

Her blush deepened, but she didn't contest his claim.

"Anyways, if you can balance the romance between all three, and it's kind of looking like you can, then I think it could be pretty popular. I didn't see any real mistakes that an editor couldn't easily fix. Good work, Blake."

She smiled happily. "Thanks, Tukson. So how do I, you know, publish it?"

He stroked his chin for a moment, thinking. "I suppose I could help you with that. Be your agent, or something. Not a lot of customers here at the moment," he pointed out.

"Really? You'd do that for me?" Blake asked, eyes wide.

"Sure," he shrugged. "One last favor for a friend before I get the hell out of here."

She ran around the counter and wrapped the much larger man in a hug. "Thanks, Tukson. You're the best."

He patted her back awkwardly. "Hey, don't mention it. It's nothing."

"And don't worry, I'll take care of the White Fang," she said as she pulled away.

"Blake, no," he sighed, reaching out to stop her, but she was already darting away back behind the counter.

"Just leave it to me," she said as she pulled out some lien to pay for her book.

"Blake, really! There are some really dangerous people that you _don't_ want to mess with–"

"Adam wouldn't hurt me," she said confidently.

"Not Adam."

Her eyes narrowed. "Who, then?"

"I already told you. I'll help you with your book, but not with getting yourself killed." He stared at her in disapproval.

"Whether you tell me or not, I'll find out what's happening. It would only be safer for me if I had more information," she pointed out with a small smirk.

He growled nonverbally, his displeasure clear, but eventually he gave in. "Roman Torchwick," he spat out from between gritted teeth.

"The thief?" Blake asked, confused. "No… he's human. The White Fang would never work with him."

"A lot has changed, Blake," he warned her again.

"No… no, there must be something more to this. It doesn't make sense. But don't worry, I'll figure it out," she declared. "Thanks, Tukson. Really, thank you for everything."

She turned to leave, and made it to the door before Tukson finally responded.

"Thank me by staying safe."

o-o-o-o-o

"_Ruby!"_

The call was clear, even over the chaotic din of the battlefield. Without hesitation, Ruby activated her Semblance, using it to disengage from Nora and stream towards the sound of Weiss' voice as a rush of rose petals.

She materialized with a swing of her scythe, forcing Blake to leap back from where she had been trying to break through Weiss' guard. Blake's two blades offered an advantage against the heiress' single weapon in close combat, and Weiss had been close to being overwhelmed.

Ruby pressed forward, using wide, sweeping blows that practically forced Blake to dodge in certain directions. Having expected the reinforcements, Weiss immediately switched to summoning glyphs in the air around her exclusively, trusting Ruby to keep the attention of their foe.

A barrage of white bolts of pure force shot unerringly towards Blake, fired in advance to strike just where she would dodge to. With each narrow escape of the scythe's blade, she was struck by one or two bolts, until she started to use her Semblance to flash away and try to gain some distance.

The shadow clones she left behind were instantly perforated, and Ruby's bursts of Semblance assisted speed were easily able to keep up with her attempts to escape. At this rate, if the minor blows didn't whittle her Aura down, extensive Semblance use would, and she didn't have a chance to get a blow in edgewise.

She spared a moment to send a worried glance around the arena, taking another glancing hit for the trouble. She'd been leading Ruby back towards Nora, who should have been moving to assist her. Where was she?!

She managed to catch a glimpse of Nora desperately deflecting an arrow away from her face with her hammer, simultaneously taking a second one heavily in the thigh. The blow sent her stumbling back – away from Blake.

Shirou Traced several more steel arrows in his right hand, rapidly nocking and firing them at Nora, continuing to drive her further away from assisting her teammate. With her cumbersome weapon, even with her incredible strength, she had a hard time deflecting swift projectiles.

Meanwhile, off to his right, Pyrrha fought valiantly against Yang, who was supported by Ren. Her own two-on-one was going significantly better than Blake's was – in fact, better even than when she fought Yang one on one in combat class. As far as Shirou could tell, she hadn't yet taken a single hit, much to Yang's frustration. Perhaps it was the fact that she was surrounded by a yellow glow, courtesy of Weiss, and moving at speeds that she'd never been capable of before. Perhaps it was the fact that her opponents' weapons frequently seemed to move on their own, coincidentally aiming at each other more often than not. They were slowly pushing her back towards Shirou, but they weren't accomplishing much in the way of damaging her Aura beyond the negligible amounts that her Semblance usage was draining from it.

Perhaps they wanted to push past her, and try to take out the ranged support that was keeping Nora pinned down?

Well, that was all part of the plan. As they reached a certain distance from him, at some unspoken signal, Pyrrha turned and dashed past him. Simultaneously, he dissolved his bow, tracing in its place a copy of Pyrrha's weapons, and charged towards her attackers.

"_Switch!" _Pyrrha yelled as she skidded to a stop next to Weiss, arm raised, just as the glow surrounding her finally faded.

Weiss immediately turned away from Ruby and Blake, and Ruby unhesitatingly turned her back on her opponent and began to rush away again.

In the sudden lull of force bullets, unpinned for the first time and running low on Aura, Blake desperately lunged for Ruby's retreating back–

And was struck full in the chest by Pyrrha's javelin, which had flown through the air in the blink of an eye, accelerated along its path by a trail of concentric floating white sigils. Blake flew back at the impact, heavily colliding with the field surrounding the arena, and she didn't get back up.

Simultaneously, as Nora straightened up to recover after the devastating hail of arrows finally ceased, a red blur shot past her. The blade of a scythe hooked around her abdomen and pulled her backwards. Off balance, when the sharp retort of a sniper rifle firing jerked the blade into her again with remarkable power, she was sent flying as well, crashing into the opposite wall only a moment after Blake. Nora, at least, began to struggle to her feet again, but Ruby was already streaking towards her to finish her off.

Meanwhile, Shirou did his best impersonation of Pyrrha – which, at this point, was pretty damn good. Over the past few months of the semester, since his recovery, he and his team had thrown their all into training. Already, he was more muscular than he'd ever been, more able to boost himself through Reinforcement to the levels of a Huntsman. According to Yang, who seemed to take note of such things, he might have grown a centimeter or two taller as well.

Aside from the reduction in speed that Weiss' glyph had granted Pyrrha, and the lack of magnetic interference with their weapons, they might not even have noticed that they were fighting a different opponent. A thrown shield bashed Ren away from where he'd been trying to flank him, even as a smooth slide under a burst from Ember Celica allowed him to drag his blade across Yang's bare calf, biting into her Aura.

Of course, Akoúo̱ did not fly back to his hand, the way it would have with Pyrrha. Rather, as he stood with a rising slash that forced Yang to step back, he held out his arm, and at the precise break in tempo that would have allowed Pyrrha to re-arm herself, he simply Traced a new shield.

He thought he saw Yang roll her eyes angrily at the sight, just before her hair flashed gold, her eyes turned red, and she charged at him once more.

He only had to defend for a short time. Even with her enhanced strength, the reduction in skill and tactics made it easy enough – she fought like a Berserker class, but she was no Heracles.

He deflected blow after blow, never taking the full brunt of the attack in favor of slight redirections. A few bullets from Ren's Stormflower skittered off his armor, but the low caliber rounds couldn't penetrate the Reinforced steel alloy, and because of the way his magecraft worked, they didn't do any damage to his prana reserves the way they would have at least chipped away at Aura on a normal Huntsman.

And then, her speed enhancement reapplied, Pyrrha was back in the fray, and Ren was forced back by a giant icicle that formed out of the ground as Weiss took over keeping him busy.

If Yang thought fighting one Pyrrha was bad enough, fighting two of them together was exponentially worse. Each punch, each kick, even a desperate headbutt, all were met and deflected by golden steel.

Shirou and Pyrrha moved together like they were a single entity – not like they could read each other's thoughts, but even _more _synchronized. As if they thought the same thing simultaneously in the first place.

It was an impossible battle. That much was clear to Yang from the moment it began. She threw a heavy right punch – it was met by Pyrrha's shield, and simultaneously, two copies of Miló and one of Akoúo̱ were streaking towards her on three distinct attack vectors, and try as she might Yang was only able to block one of the blades, the other two weapons taking small chunks out of her Aura.

Somehow, while she had been reeling, Shirou had slid around Pyrrha, and was now directly in front of her. She tried to overwhelm him, striking out with both fists nigh simultaneously and twisting her body to deliver a vicious kick in the same instant. Shirou unflinchingly bashed aside her right arm with his shield, twisted aside her left with his blade, and was left wide open for her kick – but somehow Pyrrha had known it was coming, even from behind him. She vaulted over his back, plunging down in a diving kick on top of Yang's ankle mid-kick and driving it painfully to the ground, forcing the blonde to roll backwards to regain her feet.

Still, though, even as infuriating as fighting the both of them together was, there was one thing about the situation that made Yang even more angry, made her Semblance burn even brighter.

She devoted all her attention to Pyrrha, attacking with wild abandon. "_You said! You wouldn't! Hold back!" _she roared.

Shirou, to his credit, disengaged, and moved to support Weiss as she closed with Ren. _Good, _Yang thought. This was between her and Pyrrha.

Her Aura was getting low anyways, and she wasn't much longer for this fight. She knew she was beaten – but at least she would lose to Pyrrha's full power.

Pyrrha seemed to accept that as well. She lunged forward, shield outstretched, and delivered a bash strong enough to send Yang staggering back a couple of steps.

She recovered quickly, and made to dash back into the fray, but Pyrrha was faster.

The champion of the arena shot her arms out to either side, gathering a thick black nimbus around each hand, and then clapped them together over her head. In accordance with Pyrrha's motions, Yang felt her own hands pulled apart, and then yanked up above her head, lifting her into the air – suspended by her gauntlets.

She noticed that things had gotten pretty quiet. She scanned the arena to see Blake groggily rubbing her chest and leaning against one wall, weapons strewn at her side. Nora was guarded by Ruby, having clearly surrendered. Ren, her last hope, was prone on his back, surrounded by a slick patch of ice, and the ever-sure-footed Weiss held her rapier near enough to his throat that the meaning was clear.

Well, that left just her, then. She kicked out in front of her uselessly, still at least a meter away from connecting with Pyrrha. With all her strength, fueled by her Semblance, she pulled, and managed to create a gap between her hands – and then a slightly larger one – but as her exertion faded, they snapped back together, completely negating her Herculean effort.

She sighed, and disengaged her Shot-Gauntlets. They collapsed back into their bracelet form, and by thumbing another lever, they clicked open, allowing her wrists to slip free.

"Really, Yang?" Pyrrha asked in exasperation as she sidestepped the exhausted blonde's sloppy attempt at a tackle, before proceeding to slam the pair of collapsed gauntlets that she still controlled with her Semblance into the back of Yang's head, knocking her to the ground.

It was over.

"Nice work, everyone!" Shirou called out as he jogged back over with a wide grin, once more holding his bow. "I mean, Yang, you missed that I was right behind you while you were strung up, and I could have shot you before you gave up on strength and resorted to abandoning your weapons. But good attitude! Never give up!"

"Thanks," Yang grumbled as she rubbed the back of her head tenderly.

"And Pyrrha, what did Professor Goodwitch tell you?" Shirou asked in a slightly lecturing tone.

Pyrrha sighed. "I know, I know. No mercy…"

"It's for you and us," Yang reminded her from the ground. "Treating us with kiddie gloves won't make us better, even if you _can _still beat us with them on. And even if your Semblance is _really _annoying to deal with."

As the other students made their way to the center of the arena, Pyrrha reached down and helped Yang to her feet, handing her back her gauntlets as she did. "I know. Believe me, I'm using it more against you all than I ever have before."

"It shows," Ren said as he approached with Weiss and Blake, as calm as ever. "I think I shot Yang more than you, Pyrrha. Sorry, Yang."

"No worries," Yang shrugged. "Just more fuel for the Semblance, right?"

"Hmph! At least you have that!" Nora somehow managed to combine pout with cheer as she and Ruby joined them. "Ren! We need to find a way to zap me with electricity in battle, fast, or we'll never catch up!"

"Woohoo! Another victory for Team RESN!" Ruby cheered, high-fiving the other members of her team as Ren nodded his assent to Nora's request. "But hey, speaking of catching up, what's up? Usually it's a lot closer of a fight."

"I noticed that too," Shirou said. "Ren, normally you fight really well with Nora, and Yang fights well with Blake. Why'd you split up so much today?"

The other boy shrugged. "Trying something new, considering you usually beat our regular strategies as well. Blake said she thought she could take out Weiss quickly if she could get her alone by surprise."

"Sorry, guys," Blake sighed. "It didn't work. My fault."

"Eh, we'll get 'em next time!" Nora exclaimed, patting her teammate on the back.

"Blake, are you sure you're alright?" Shirou asked. "It seemed like you were a little tired out there, a little distracted. You got hit a lot more than usual."

"It's nothing. I'm fine," she said dismissively. She shrugged off Nora's hand and began to walk away. "I'm going to go get changed."

Everyone watched as she made her way towards the locker room with varying levels of worry.

"Umm, that was kind of weird?" Ruby said hesitantly. "Normally, she sticks around for the full breakdown of the match…"

"Yeah," Yang agreed with a frown. "She's been acting a little weird all week. And I don't mean like normal 'follow people around and write in her notebook' weird. She's been coming back to the room really late, skipping meals, spending all her time in the library…"

"Perhaps she's interested in a new book?" Weiss suggested.

"No, that's the thing," Yang grimaced. "She came back from Vale with a new book just this weekend, and she's barely touched it. I've never seen her do that before."

"One of us should talk to her about it later," Ren suggested. "Should I, or would you like to?"

Yang shook her head. "She's my partner. I'll do it."

"Let us know if there's anything we can do to help!" Ruby chimed in, the rest of her team nodding their agreement.

"Thanks for your support," Ren said with a small bow. "And thank you for another challenging fight."

"You guys did really well today," Nora admitted. "You're shoe-ins for Vytal tournament champions for sure!"

"Hey, we'll hook you up to a generator beforehand, and then we'll be unstoppable!" Yang encouraged her, causing Nora to giggle.

"Do you think that would work? How much electricity do you think I can store? At least one lightning bolt worth, I know that! How many lightning bolts are in a generator? Do you think I'll pop if I take in too much?!" The idea of self-explosion only seemed to make her giggle more.

"Maybe a generator isn't the best choice," Ren said cautiously. "I'm sure we can maybe afford to buy a few lightning Dust rounds for our weapons, just for use in the tournament."

"I might be able to offer you some SDC Dust, free of charge," Weiss said, adopting her typical 'I'm amazing, praise me' pose, with crossed arms and a slightly upturned nose combined with a smirk. "Just in the interest of making things fair, of course."

"Really?! Yay!" Nora jumped forward and squeezed the girl in a tight hug. "You're the best, Weiss! I promise not to smash you _too _hard with your own Dust!"

Weiss, flustered, struggled in vain to break free. "L-let me go! Or no Dust!"

Nora immediately dropped her unceremoniously, but Weiss managed to keep her feet. "Ahem," she coughed as she smoothed out her skirt. "Yes, of course. A Schnee is always generous with their friends." Despite her rough handling, and though she tried to hide it, she seemed happy to help.

"Anyways, good work, all of you," Shirou smiled. "Ruby, excellent response time on the callouts, and excellent execution. It's thanks to you that we got Blake and Nora so easily."

Ruby blushed. "Thanks! And thanks for the support, especially Weiss!"

Pyrrha nodded. "Yeah. Weiss, you're a huge force multiplier. With your acceleration glyph alone…"

Weiss smiled. "I thought that one might pair well with you. A multiplier is only as good as the base that it modifies, after all," she said in a rare display of humility – but then again, she'd always had a soft spot for the great Pyrrha Nikos.

"Good battlefield control, too, Weiss," Shirou noted. "Fire support, zoning people out with barriers, and terrain manipulation, all done well."

Weiss nodded in thanks to him as well. "Of course, you and Pyrrha performed excellently as always," she pointed out. Pyrrha offered her a polite nod of thanks in response.

Ren turned to what was left of his own team, preparing his own analysis for a brief moment before speaking. "Nora. Call for backup if you need it. Communication is key. Blake or I could have distracted Shirou long enough for you to get back in the fight."

Nora snapped off a sloppy salute. "Yes, sir!"

"A little armor would protect you more from the impact of my arrows," Shirou noted.

Ren nodded. "Good point, Shirou. We'll look into that."

He turned to the brawler. "Yang. Try not to lose yourself to anger when you activate your Semblance. It was interesting to fight at your side for once – I had no idea just how much control you sacrifice in exchange for raw power."

Yang winced slightly at the blunt analysis. "But I need that power. I'm outmatched against Pyrrha either way, but at least with my Semblance, I can deal a little more damage than without."

"At the cost of being knocked out of the fight swiftly afterwards," he countered. "I'm not suggesting you give up on using your Semblance. We're going to train later to see how my Semblance interacts with yours, at least until you develop more mental discipline of your own."

She looked thoughtful at the proposal.

"Any other comments?" Ren asked, looking around at the members of both teams.

"Is there any, I don't know, anti-magnet paint we can cover our weapons with?" Yang asked, half sarcastic, half pleading.

"Not that I know of," her leader replied. "Unfortunately."

Yang shook her head in disappointment. "Alright then, nothing else," she said. "See you guys later! No sparring tomorrow, right?"

Ruby answered for her team. "Sorry guys, we're booked for sparring with CVFY."

Yang crossed her arms and smiled. "I'm still envious that my little sister managed to finagle her way into getting private combat tutoring from a second-year team."

Shirou chuckled. "You can get stabbed by the bully who was harassing a second-year next time then, if you want."

"Eh, I guess I'll pass," Yang nonchalantly waved off the suggestion with a flip of her hair as she turned to leave. "We'd better go check on Blake. See you in class!"

Ruby turned back to her team as the rest of RVBY made their way to the locker rooms.

"Well… we barely got scratched!" She exclaimed, no longer able to contain her excitement. "All of us! Like, I didn't want to brag so much in front of them, but we _rule!" _

Her wide smile was contagious.

"Since we're all still pretty fresh, then, shall we have another match? Two on two?" Shirou asked. "Since we always practice with other full teams, we've never really gotten the chance to spar against each other in a team setting."

Pyrrha smiled, the almost predatory grin that she sometimes bore with the anticipation of a good fight. Weiss nodded along, and Ruby spoke for the three of them. "Sounds fun!"

"Alright, how should we divide the teams?" he asked.

"I want Weiss!" cried Ruby. Simultaneously, Weiss yelled "Me and Pyrrha!" and Pyrrha called out "Dibs on Shirou!"

Ruby looked at her partner with wide eyes, betrayed. Weiss huffed annoyedly at Pyrrha, and Pyrrha stared hopefully at Shirou.

"Ok, well, that didn't work," Shirou helpfully pointed out. "Sorry, Ruby, but Pyrrha and I should probably be on separate teams. I suppose to make sure everyone is equally displeased, then it should be Weiss with me and Ruby with Pyrrha?"

Everyone hesitantly agreed, and the two pairs walked off to opposite sides of the arena to strategize.

"Alright, Weiss, what's the plan?" Shirou asked casually as he checked his armor again, making sure it was still fully reinforced.

"Me?" Weiss asked, surprised. "Between the two of us, aren't you the more experienced? You should make the plan."

"Weiss, what did Professor Goodwitch tell you?" he reminded her teasingly.

Weiss rolled her eyes. "It's not about winning, it's about learning," she recited dutifully.

Shirou nodded. "You're our primary battlefield controller, which means that no matter who's technically the leader, or who's the most experienced, you're going to direct the flow of the fight most of the time, so it makes sense that you practice strategizing. The better you get at it without a time limit, like now, the more naturally it'll come in a fight."

She nodded, more determined. "Alright. I can't stand up to Pyrrha up close, and Crescent Rose isn't a great matchup for Myrtenaster either. I can at least hold my own against Ruby, but you'll have to keep Pyrrha off me."

He bobbed his agreement to her assessment. "So, what are both team's advantages?" he prompted.

"Well, our respective Semblances, obviously. My glyphs and your weapons, compared to Ruby's maneuverability and Pyrrha's polarity."

"And how do we leverage those to our advantage?"

"I'll give you my time dilation, for one," she started out. "You'll need it to keep up with Pyrrha. Are you planning on copying her weapons again?"

"I should be asking you that," he pointed out with a laugh.

She thought for a moment, and then shook her head. "You might have the edge, with my acceleration, but her Semblance would counter them well."

He nodded again. "Right. It's great when we're fighting together, because her Semblance basically lets her sense my position, and my attacks as I make them, because of how much of an affinity she has for her own weapons. I've used the strategy of overloading that sense before with enough copies, but she's wised up to it by now."

"So, to leverage your ability to make any weapon, you should use one that won't be affected by her Semblance. Bronze, maybe? And then you should be able to fight her on equal footing. Except…" She looked him up and down worriedly.

Shirou smiled. "I was wondering when you would catch that. Typically, when I spar with Pyrrha we have an agreement that she won't use her Semblance on my armor, because it's understood that I could just as easily not wear it and she doesn't want to hurt me with a lucky blow. But since this is a special occasion…"

Weiss was about to protest for safety reasons, but she trailed off before she could even begin as he unbuckled his breastplate and set it to the side. He was left in a sleeveless black undershirt that clung tightly to his muscles in a very interesting way.

"So, as long as your acceleration lasts, I can take Pyrrha," he continued, either without noticing her stare or uncaring of it. "Who do you think Ruby will focus on?"

"Me," she answered more confidently after a slight shake of her head to clear her mind. "Pyrrha will be sure she can take you on head to head, so Ruby will try to eliminate me so I can't continue to support you."

"Have any plans for dealing with her?"

"It used to be as simple as making the floor icy and she would just rocket around past me with no control, but she's gotten a lot better lately," Weiss admitted. "I've shown her most of my tricks at least once, and she's a quick learner."

"Well, good luck!" he said with a smile. "I'm sure you'll think of something!"

"What? That's it?!" she asked, shocked.

Shirou laughed. "You're the strategist, remember? But hey, you want to win, right?"

"Obviously." She crossed her arms.

"Well, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. Just do your best against Ruby, and I'm sure we'll pull through."

Weiss raised a condescending eyebrow. "We're up against the Invincible Girl and your advice is to just 'do my best?'"

Shirou shrugged. "She's not actually invincible. You know that, right?"

Weiss huffed. "She might as well be, compared to everyone else."

"You know, Weiss," Shirou said as he finished taking off his leg armor, placing it beside the rest of his gear. "I think you and Pyrrha could get along with each other a lot better than you do now."

"W-what do you mean?" Weiss asked, startled. "My interactions with Pyrrha have never been anything less than polite and professional."

Shirou shook his head. "That's what I mean. Look, now's probably not the time for it, but it seems like Pyrrha's a little too shy to tell you how she feels directly–"

"Shy? Are we talking about the same Pyrrha?" Weiss asked with a pointed glance towards the girl in question, who was limbering up with a wide smile and chatting with Ruby about their own strategy.

"For certain topics, yeah," Shirou easily answered. "For now? Let me just tell you that some of the times that I've seen Pyrrha happiest are when she's lost a fight."

Weiss was skeptical. "That can't be a common sight."

He laughed. "It's not, but it's one I'd like to see more." He straightened up, having bent to remove even his steel-toed boots. "So, let's go win!"

Weiss performed one last check of Myrtenaster's Dust chambers, ensuring that they were all full. "We both know it's not going to be that easy," she argued.

"Believing you can win is half the battle," Shirou said. "If your opponent is someone you can't beat in real life, then beat them in your imagination. Imagine something that you can beat them with, and then make that image a reality."

What could have been taken as trite was said with such conviction that Weiss had no choice but to take note. "You think it's that simple?" she asked.

Shirou's arm rose to one side and began to shimmer with jagged neon lines. A simple spear made of bronze with a pronounced cross-guard just below the weapon's blade coalesced in his hand. He turned to Weiss with one of his annoyingly sincere smiles. "It always has been for me."

Weiss nodded resolutely and tightened her grip on her rapier as they stepped forward, mirrored by Ruby and Pyrrha across the stage. "I'll try."

o-o-o-o-o

**Hey! Sorry again for the delay! Had a lot of stuff to deal with that I'd put off until the last 2 or 3 weeks, but now I've got it all done, I should be able to go back to writing more often. I could have made this one a double length chapter, but it would have delayed the release by another few days, and I figured I'd taken a long enough hiatus already. **

**Welcome to the second main arc of the story! Please continue to read and enjoy, and as always, I love hearing from readers in both reviews and PMs!**


	13. Chapter 13

Weiss' mind raced as she moved forwards a few steps behind Shirou. Almost automatically, she chambered her lightning Dust and prepared to cast her Time Dilation glyph under Shirou.

_Imagine a way to win, hmm?_ She hurriedly cycled through the short list of people that she looked up to, desperately asking herself how each of them would react when faced with an opponent as strong and skilled as Pyrrha.

What would Winter, her older sister, do? That line of thought was cut short quickly – even if she wasn't a fully trained Huntress, she could just call in an airstrike from the Atlesian military, which obviously wasn't viable here. Same went for General Ironwood.

What would Professor Goodwitch do? Probably use her own Semblance, which was like Pyrrha's but even better, to trivially end the fight. Another path that wouldn't work for Weiss.

What would Pyrrha herself do? Naturally, she would use her own equally incredible skill and powerful Semblance. Why had she even bothered to ask herself this one?!

_Why was this so hard?! _She could think of ways that Pyrrha might be beaten, sure, but none of those were things that she herself was capable of!

Her eyes flickered to her left, landing on the leanly muscled boy who twirled his bronze spear with such confidence as he settled into a combat stance. _What would he do?_

For a moment, she was tempted to simply answer her own question with 'create a magical weapon and instantly win,' but on second thought… that was only the _outcome_ of his process. No, he'd just told her what he would do – he'd imagine a way to win. Which just left her back at square one…

So, what was Shirou able to do that she wasn't? Was it just because his Semblance was better?

Preposterous. The Schnee family was renowned for having one of the most versatile hereditary Semblances in the world. While Shirou might have her outclassed in raw power, he certainly couldn't match her in versatility – she _had_ to have as many tricks up her sleeve as he did.

Shirou's Semblance was to summon swords. The _Schnee _Semblance was simply _to summon. _It was notoriously difficult to master, but those who had done so, including her sister, could even summon familiars, constructs composed of pure Aura that could fight autonomously. She had never managed that herself, but with the right application of Dust, she could still summon fire, ice, barriers of hard-light, and even localized gravity wells.

She had been thinking about it wrong, she realized. It would do her no good to imagine other people who could beat Pyrrha – she had to imagine _herself_ as someone who could beat Pyrrha. The potential uses of her glyphs, when combined with Dust, were practically unlimited, constrained only by her imagination. Surely one of those uses, or some combination of them, would allow her to win.

She just had to find which one.

And before that, she had to beat Ruby – a less daunting task, certainly, but still by no means an easy one.

"Everyone ready?" Shirou asked, positioning himself in a way that made it clear he would be squaring off against Pyrrha.

Ruby shot him a thumbs up, and Pyrrha's grin spoke for her. Weiss resolutely nodded.

"Alright, then. Begin!"

Before he even finished the word, her blade was slicing through the air.

She moved gracefully, like a dancer. The movements she had practiced hundreds of times before acted like a mnemonic device, aligning her mind to perfectly focus on the glyph she wanted. Her finger lightly squeezed Myrtenaster's trigger, sending a yellow pulse of lightning Dust shooting down the fuller of her blade and causing it to glow briefly before it contacted the rapidly forming Glyph underneath Shirou.

As soon as he felt his movements begin to speed up, he bolted towards Pyrrha – but Weiss couldn't afford to watch further, as Ruby was already upon her.

A loud crack split the air, and with Aura-enhanced reflexes, Weiss conjured a glyph of hard-light in front of her to absorb the shot – but Ruby had fired backwards, away from her, to provide thrust for a charge.

Weiss nimbly threw herself backwards into a handspring as the blade of the small girl's massively oversized scythe sliced through the hastily erected barrier like it wasn't even there.

"_Weisss_!" came the reaper's battle-cry as she darted after her partner. "We could have been on a team, you traitor!"

Weiss _almost _smiled at the over-dramatic girl's antics, even as she rotated Myrtenaster's cylinder and summoned an array of four small glyphs with quick slashes of her sword. "We wouldn't have stood a chance!" she called back as each glyph, enhanced by red Dust, launched a small fireball at Ruby. "We had to make it fair!"

Ruby was forced to shield herself with the broad blade of her scythe, but the concussive force as each fireball exploded was still enough to send her skidding backwards away from her target. She slammed the point of her weapon into the ground to arrest her slide, and then used the stability of the position to squeeze off a few shots – but her bullets crashed ineffectively into a rapidly summoned block of ice. "I'll show _you_ fair! Justice will be swift! Justice will be painful!"

Weiss shook her head as a red blur of rose petals darted over her barrier, coalescing into an already mid-swing Ruby. "That doesn't even make _sense!" _Weiss shrieked as she dove to the side and narrowly avoided the falling blade of the scythe.

This wasn't working. Ruby was keeping her on her back foot, forcing her to fight defensively – and if she kept it up long enough, Shirou's acceleration would wear off, and the fight would basically be over at that point. She had to turn things around somehow, and fast.

She glanced down at Myrtenaster as she rolled to her feet. Still chambered to ice Dust.

A horizontal slash of Crescent Rose was met with a textbook parry, deflecting the blade just centimeters above her head, but even with perfect form, it took nearly all her strength to manage that much. A white glyph under her feet granted her the purchase and impulse she needed to spring away once more.

_Imagine a way to win._

Ruby thought she could overpower Myrtenaster with her massive blade? Weiss refused! Her sword, while slender, was more than steel! It was a conduit for Dust, for Aura, and it would not be so easily overcome!

With another pull of the trigger, icy blue Dust suffused her blade, even as a similarly colored glyph formed on the floor beneath her – a large one, several meters across.

An image of Shirou flashed through her thoughts for a brief moment.

"_Hah!" _Weiss let out a wordless cry as she spun rapidly, bringing her left arm around in a heavy horizontal slash – which didn't come anywhere close to Ruby.

Following her motion, however, Dust was catalyzed by Aura, and the resulting release of power was focused and given form by glyph and intent.

A massive blade, dwarfing Crescent Rose, larger even than the stone axe-sword that Shirou had once shown them in their room, materialized in the air. The sword, composed of purest ice, followed the arc of her swing exactly, delayed by only a fraction of a second.

Ruby's eyes grew wide as she hastily aborted her next attack and brought the haft of her scythe up for a block. The giant sword of ice, however, outweighed her by a considerable margin. The blade shattered on impact with her weapon – but the force of the blow still sent her flying, past Pyrrha and Shirou, all the way to the edge of the stage, where she finally collided with the energy barrier.

Weiss finally allowed herself to fully smile as Ruby gathered herself and stood once more, determinedly preparing to charge back into the fray – but missing a significant portion of her Aura. "How's _that _for fair," Weiss muttered to herself as she began to run towards her weakened opponent.

o-o-o-o-o

As soon as Shirou felt his movements beginning to speed up, he bolted towards Pyrrha.

The spear he wielded was a strange one – usually, with a spear, length would be prioritized, and the style associated with such a weapon would emphasize leveraging that length to quickly and easily attack any point on an enemy's body while keeping that enemy far away from the wielder. The spear he held, however, threw that convention out the window.

It was short – only around a meter-and-a-half in length. Closer to Miló's size, in its javelin form, than most of the proper spears recorded in his Reality Marble.

He wasted no time bantering as he charged at his partner. She met him with a rising slash of her sword, but he easily blocked it, allowing the strike to push him back a short distance so that he could resume his attack before she recovered.

He slashed down diagonally with his spear, and it was met by Akoúo̱ – but his strike had no force to it, and he rebounded off the block with incredible speed, whirling into an attack from the opposite direction. Still, Pyrrha wasn't a champion for nothing, and she managed to block that blow as well with Miló – but again, he rode the rebound into a second spin, and a sweeping strike towards her legs.

She lifted and angled her leg so that his spear was deflected by her greave, and in response he deftly manipulated the shaft into a spin that resulted in a rapid-fire series of blows with both the head and the butt of the weapon at close range. Aided by Weiss' Time Dilation, his movements were practically a blur – Pyrrha was forced to give ground before the onslaught, and as his flourish came to an end with what appeared to be a single-handed stab, she readied her shield to block it –

But just before he thrust, he loosened his grip. His arm shot forward, causing him to choke up drastically on the shaft until his hand was just behind the head of his spear and turning his stab into a feint. Instead of the telegraphed stab, he took an additional step forward, hooking his right leg behind Pyrrha's own, and then punched forward heavily with the tip of the awkwardly held weapon.

The girl was sent stumbling backwards uncontrollably, although she managed to turn the inevitable fall into a graceful backwards roll.

As she came to her feet, she laughed joyously. "What style was that?" she asked, breathless.

Her laughter was so vibrant and genuine that he couldn't help but chuckle as well. "This spear is only a copy of a copy," he explained, "but the original belonged to a hero that I think you would have gotten along with well."

Pyrrha once more settled herself into a combat stance and raised an eyebrow. "And it's their style you're using?"

Shirou nodded. "Even with Weiss' help, I can't even begin to approach his level… but even if this speed is only a fraction of his, it should be enough to teach you a thing or two," he said with a smile.

Somehow, Pyrrha's own grin grew wider. Rather than wait for him to come to her again, she lowered her shield shoulder and charged forward.

Sped up as he was, Shirou had no trouble sidestepping to Pyrrha's left, behind the shield, and he thrust out towards her legs. Having either seen or predicted the attack, Pyrrha jumped, twisting her body harshly to the right and delivering a flying spinning kick to Shirou's torso.

Despite being without his armor, Shirou didn't bother to dodge or block, simply tightening his core to absorb the blow and trusting in his reinforcement. Letting go of his spear with his right hand, while Pyrrha was still midair and unable to change her trajectory, he lashed out and grabbed her by the ankle of the leg she had used to kick him. Yanking hard, he managed to pull her around in an arc and slam her into the ground.

At the last moment, he felt like he was trying to drag her through water, as Pyrrha used her Semblance on her own armor to soften the impact. Still, however, she let out a harsh expulsion of air as she hit the ground. As he released her leg, rather than spring gracefully back to her feet as she usually did, a magnetic impulse applied to her armor sent her skidding away across the ground to gain some distance before she finally rolled out of her slide.

Breathing heavily, she slung her shield over her back, and shifted Miló into its spear form. Still smiling, she sank down into a stance identical to Shirou's own.

Suddenly, Ruby flew past her, crashing into the stage's wall. The moment after, Weiss dashed past them after her opponent.

Pyrrha spared the time to glance over at her partner and wince before she turned back to Shirou. "Almost forgot it was a team fight for a second," she admitted.

"And it looks like you're about to be on a team of one," Shirou taunted.

Pyrrha raised an eyebrow in response, adding a cocky quality to her grin, and then sprinted towards him. A few meters before reaching him, she jumped, and drew back her spear with one hand before launching it towards him.

Shirou managed to deflect the javelin with a flourish of his own spear, only to find Pyrrha still flying towards him, now with both legs outstretched. He raised his weapon with both hands to block with the shaft, but the impact was unexpectedly soft.

Rather than kick him, as he'd expected, Pyrrha relaxed her legs and sank into a crouch, pressed against his spear only by the momentum of her charge, before snapping them straight suddenly and launching herself high into the air. She twisted around in midair to face her teammate.

Weiss had pressed Ruby up against the wall where she'd landed, keeping her from being able to wind up with her oversized weapon and slowly chipping away at her with her much lighter blade. As Pyrrha's unarmed hands were surrounded by black glow, Shirou hastily dissolved his spear and Projected his bow in its place as he felt Weiss' Time Dilation finally wear off.

Pyrrha yanked her hands in opposite directions from each other. Weiss was taken completely by surprise, and let out a sudden yelp as Myrtenaster roughly twisted itself out of her grip and cast itself far to one side. Ruby made to capitalize on the opportunity, rolling past Weiss and winding up for a powerful slash.

A heavy bronze arrow connected with Ruby's back as Shirou covered his teammate. The instant his arrow was loosed, however, Pyrrha came down directly on top of him, her armored knee leading the way and colliding heavily with his skull.

Both Ruby and Shirou hit the ground. The Aura reader overhead beeped loudly, signaling Ruby's elimination from the match. While Shirou's still read as mostly full, he breathed heavily from the ground as Pyrrha leveled her freshly recovered sword down at his face. "Surrender," she playfully demanded as Weiss went scrambling for her rapier.

Shirou laughed once and Projected what appeared to be a poorly balanced dagger with a red hilt. Still on his back, he stabbed awkwardly at Pyrrha's leg. She deflected it with contemptuous ease, and it sunk slightly into the floor of the stage instead.

Pyrrha sighed and raised an eyebrow, her expression identical to when she'd had to beat Yang with her own gauntlets.

"Fine, fine, I surrender," Shirou said as he laughed again. He rolled out from under her blade and made to move towards Ruby, who was groggily sitting up and trying to rub her back. "Good luck, Weiss!" he called over to his teammate just as she finally recovered her weapon and turned to watch him in clear dismay.

o-o-o-o-o

"Shirou, you-! Ugh…" Weiss yelled back at him, gaze rapidly shifting between him and Pyrrha. She let out a heavy sigh of her own. "Thanks for the save," she grumbled almost as an afterthought.

Pyrrha looked over at her. She still smiled, but perhaps thanks to Shirou's words before the fight, Weiss was suddenly aware of how different it was compared to the smile Pyrrha had shown Shirou.

For him, Pyrrha had been full of excitement, anticipation. More than that, even – there had been an underlying level of comfort and camaraderie to her expression.

For Weiss… it wasn't _cold, _necessarily. There was no malice or unfriendliness to the smile. It just seemed… empty. Polite, but hollow. It was the same smile that Weiss realized she'd seen on the television dozens of times, before and after each of Pyrrha's victories in various combat tournaments.

"Would you like to call it here?" Pyrrha asked her.

Whether it was confidence in her ability to win or consideration for her opponent, Weiss realized that Pyrrha was utterly apathetic about fighting her. She had no expectations for the remainder of the match, no excitement.

That should have made her angry, like she was being looked down upon, but it didn't. Instead, Weiss just felt sad, disappointed with herself. Was this the impression that she'd made on her teammate so far?

She resolved to fix that impression.

"Only if you plan on surrendering," Weiss answered, trying to inject as much confidence into her tone as possible. In response, she thought see saw a flicker of something in Pyrrha's eyes, perhaps a slight twitch upwards of her smile – but she couldn't be sure.

In response, Pyrrha flourished her spear, and held her shield before her defensively.

Weiss twirled Myrtenaster as well, once more drawing upon her Semblance to cast one of her most difficult glyphs. Her lightning Dust cartridge was nearly completely spent as yet another Time Dilation glyph appeared beneath her feet, lowering her Aura down to around two-thirds. She glanced upwards as it took effect – before his untimely elimination, Shirou had done good work, and Pyrrha's Aura sat at around the same level.

She felt her body speeding up, her heart racing, and began a complicated dance, summoning small glyphs as fast as she could. She had to overwhelm Pyrrha from a distance before she could close to melee range, however impossible that task seemed.

A dozen shining cyan glyphs released streaks of light that curved through the air to home in on Pyrrha, each capable of delivering force equivalent to a punch from Yang – in other words, quite a lot. But – it was useless, Weiss could already tell.

Akoúo̱ was an immovable bulwark, a perfect defense. No matter which angle the attacks came from, how nigh-simultaneously they struck, Pyrrha's shield managed to deftly deflect them.

As Pyrrha batted aside the eighth laser, she shifted her weight forward, clearly intending on charging through the rest of the barrage, and then…

She tripped?!

Weiss watched in shock as the Invincible Girl fell flat on her face with an undignified squawk, the remaining four bolts of light curving down to strike her exposed back and shaving off a neat ten percent of her Aura.

For a moment, Weiss froze, unable to believe her fortune, before she resumed her complicated series of whirls and flourishes. She had to finish her off before she could recover–!

But even from the ground, even with Weiss moving at superhuman speeds, Pyrrha was able to reach out a hand and _pull._ For the second time, and before she had a chance to complete a single glyph, Myrtenaster was torn from Weiss' grip, and brought skittering to a halt beside Pyrrha as she pushed herself back to her feet with a small groan.

Weiss let out a cry of dismay as she lost her weapon again. A moment later, she dove to one side to escape the whirling disc of burnished gold that went slicing through her previous position.

Weiss then continued to dodge, jump, and dive away from the shield as it ricocheted impossibly off surfaces and curved in midair to unerringly pursue her. Still, however, it was easier to avoid than it should have been – looking back at Pyrrha, Weiss saw that she was only distractedly directing her shield with one hand, while the other seemed to be… tugging at her leg? Was she stuck to the floor somehow?

_Imagine a way to win._

She had a chance. She wasn't sure how, but Pyrrha was at a disadvantage. It might have been suicide to try to recover her weapon from where it lay within Pyrrha's reach, but…

For a moment, her mind flashed back to her first time sparring with Shirou – to the style he'd shown her, that of an old friend that he claimed was an experienced Dust user. Her hand slipped into the reinforced pouch she wore at her back, where she kept spare vials of Dust to reload the cartridges in sword.

The shield flew at her again, and Weiss sent a pulse of Aura into one of the vials at her back, agitating the Dust within. She sprang backwards, and threw the vial down in front of her with all her might.

There was a large explosion, the force of it enough to send her flying backwards further than she'd intended. Only her reflexes being accelerated by her glyph allowed her to twist in the air and land on her feet, and when the smoke cleared… Pyrrha's shield was fully encased in a jaggedly spiked mass of ice.

Weiss grinned triumphantly at Pyrrha just in time to see the redhead's eyebrows shoot up in surprise, followed shortly afterwards by a definite, if slight, widening of her smile. Giving up on her legs, which were still inexplicably stuck in place, Pyrrha flipped Miló around into its rifle form and began to fire at Weiss.

Most trained Huntsmen were fast enough to deflect bullets with their weapons. At the moment, Weiss was considerably faster than even that. Especially against a semi-automatic rifle like Pyrrha's, Weiss was able to weave through the gunfire with ease.

Five vials left – one for each of the types of Dust she used in Myrtenaster, except for ice, obviously. She tried not to think about how much her last attack had cost – each of her vials contained enough Dust to be able to refill one of the cartridges of her sword a dozen times over – and especially not how much she was still prepared to spend if it meant winning.

Pyrrha might have been pinned, somehow, but she was far from being defenseless. If Weiss wanted to attack her directly, she would have to overwhelm her in a single blow.

She palmed _four_ of the vials as she dashed through the bullets, closing the distance to Pyrrha, and jumped.

Pyrrha snapped Miló back into a sword without hesitation, casting out her other hand and pulling Myrtenaster into it with a pulse of magnetism.

At the apex of her leap, Weiss cast out her arm, hand splayed, and four twinkling glass vials shot towards Pyrrha in a wide arc – red, yellow, white, and purple.

Pyrrha threw both of her weapons in an attempt to intercept them, and both blades found a vial. Whether through luck or skill, the two vials that burst prematurely were a bad combination for the still airborne Weiss – red and white. Fire and Wind. The other two, lightning and gravity, sailed through in the split second that it took for the Dust to react and explode, breaking at Pyrrha's feet.

The first explosion occurred halfway between the two girls. The large quantity of agitated red Dust would have created a massive fireball even _without _being fed by whirlwind quantities of white Dust. As it was, the flash produced blinded both girls momentarily, and the explosive force knocked Pyrrha down to her back, hard, even as it sent Weiss careening through the air to the other side of the arena.

The _second _explosion, centered on Pyrrha, was more subdued – but it was still enough to make her cry out in pain as electricity arced over her body, which was pinned down heavily by a localized well of increased gravity.

"_Whoa," _Ruby muttered with wide eyes from where she sat against the far wall of the stage next to Shirou. He could only nod in agreement as Weiss finally hit the ground and tumbled for several meters before coming to a halt.

He looked to the Aura readers. Both were dangerously low – Weiss was down to around one quarter, and Pyrrha's was even lower, in the high teens – but neither were completely out.

From where Weiss unsteadily got to her feet, ears ringing, she could see this as well. She reached for her final vial of Dust.

As the effects of her previous two vials wore off, she watched Pyrrha push herself upwards just as gingerly. As her hearing began to clear up, she heard the tall girl laughing.

"I'm impressed, Weiss!" Pyrrha yelled, a little too loudly. It seemed her hearing was affected as well. "I suppose this is why they ban Dust from Mistralian tournaments!"

Weiss took in her opponent. Her armor was badly scorched in places, and her hair, presumably because of the lightning Dust, was a complete mess, sticking up in every direction. Still, however, her wide smile, the pure excitement visible in her emerald eyes…

Weiss couldn't help but smile back.

"Still… I'm not done _yet!" _Pyrrha continued, punctuating her last word with forceful pull of her arm. The block of ice that held Akoúo̱ had been partially vaporized in the explosion, and her shield was partially exposed. With a sharp crack, it tore its way free from its prison and flew back to Pyrrha's waiting arm. With a wave of her free hand, Miló flew across the arena to join it.

"Nor am I!" Weiss called back. The exultation in her own voice surprised even herself. Her Time Dilation had worn off, but she still felt fast and full of energy as adrenaline coursed through her veins. Had she ever enjoyed a fight this much before?

She sprinted to her left as Pyrrha once more began to take pot-shots at her, now dodging the bullets by a considerably narrower margin. She ended her run with a diving roll, snatching up Myrtenaster from the ground with her left hand, and as she came to her feet, she pulled its trigger and conjured another barrier of hard-light to shield herself.

With her right hand, she flicked off the cork of the glass vial containing the same cyan Dust that she was using to power her shield. With a wave of her hand, the fine particulate was scattered in an arc over her head.

Closing her eyes, trusting the shield to protect her momentarily, she focused on what she knew would be her final last-ditch attack.

_Concentration. Imagination. Conjuration._

She reached out with her Aura, forming the connection between her Semblance and the Dust that saturated the air around her. With all her focus, she fought down the urge to sneeze, and began to move with slow, precise movements.

In a rough dome in the air over Pyrrha, one by one, a series of glyphs began to form. They started out white, but as they grew and were catalyzed by Dust, they began to glow the same pale, piercing blue of Weiss' eyes.

Directly in front of her, there was a shattering sound, and Weiss opened her eyes to see Akoúo̱ rebounding back towards Pyrrha off of her barrier, which was now dissolving into scattered motes of light.

Still, it had served its purpose, and bought her enough time.

She slammed Myrtenaster point first into the ground, through the center of the large glyph beneath her feet.

Each of the dozens of glyphs in the air surrounding Pyrrha shot forth a copy of her blade, each composed of a shimmering blue light.

Like a hail of radiant icicles, they crashed down towards Pyrrha. Weiss watched with bated breath as the girl whirled and spun with incredible skill, her paired weapons shattering the hard-light constructs on impact – but there were too many of them, some of them were getting through–!

_Ding._

Pyrrha stood, panting heavily, and looked above the stage. Across the battlefield, Weiss dropped to her knees and did the same.

Pyrrha's Aura was below fifteen percent.

"That. Was. _Awesome!" _Rose petals scattered across the floor of the arena as Ruby tackled Weiss from behind in a flying hug. "See, I _told _you it would have been fair! You _won!" _she yelled excitedly as Weiss continued to stare at the screen, as though she couldn't believe her own eyes.

Shirou walked up beside the disheveled Pyrrha, who gave him a pointed look before inclining her head towards the ground. He laughed, and the long dagger – the Black Key – stuck through the center of her shadow dissolved into blue light. "Sorry," he said, sounding completely unapologetic. "I had to help my teammate, though. Besides, I think you had more fun this way anyways."

"I understand, you sneak," she said with a smile. "And you're right. Neat trick. Next time I won't be as nice about demanding your surrender, though, I hope you realize."

He laughed again at the good-hearted jab and patted her on the back, providing a slight push towards where Ruby was still gushing over her partner. "Of course. You should have been suspicious that I gave up so easily in the first place. Now go on, I know you're dying to."

Weiss had just finally managed to disentangle herself from Ruby, blushing heavily, when Pyrrha jogged up in front of her and offered her a hand.

She hesitantly took it, and as Pyrrha pulled her up to her feet, Weiss' sapphire gaze met her emerald.

Her own eyes widened slightly as she saw just how vibrantly happy Pyrrha's expression was. The empty, polite smile from before the fight had been completely wiped away, replaced by excitement, satisfaction, and gratitude.

Pyrrha stepped forward and engulfed Weiss in a tight, warm embrace. A moment later, they were joined by Ruby, who happily latched herself around both of them.

"Thank you, Weiss, for an incredible fight," Pyrrha said.

"O-of course," Weiss stuttered. "It was my pleasure." She realized that for once, she actually _meant_ the platitude.

Shirou approached their three-way hug and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Nice job, Weiss. I knew you could do it."

As he made to pull his hand away, Weiss reached out through the hug and grabbed him by the wrist. "Hmph! Thanks to your advice, I spent almost a month's supply of dust in one fight!" Her face practically glowing red, she tugged slightly at his arm. "Now shut up and get over here, stupid."

Shirou laughed and allowed himself to be drawn into the hug, which Ruby and Pyrrha were only too happy to accommodate.

Weiss smiled, remembering her first day at Beacon, and the aftermath of her argument with Ruby.

Yeah, hugs were still really nice.

o-o-o-o-o

Weiss sat at her desk, working on her homework. Aside from her, only Pyrrha was in their dorm room – Shirou had gone off with Ren to prepare some things in advance for their breakfast tomorrow, and Ruby had tagged along to watch.

The atmosphere between Pyrrha and herself had improved, but only slightly. Enough for Weiss to be able to correctly identify the fact that what she'd always interpreted as studious, polite, professional silence between the two of them was in reality incredibly awkward for two members of the same team – but not enough for that awkwardness to be fixed.

She let out a sigh and placed down her pen as she realized she'd been staring at a completed essay for the better part of fifteen minutes. No, if she wanted to fix her relationship with Pyrrha, she'd have to take action.

She took a deep breath.

"Shirou told me–"

Weiss cut herself off mid-sentence, her eyes snapping up and over to Pyrrha, where she sat at her own desk in surprise – because the other girl had spoken the exact same words at the same time.

They stared at each other for a moment, both blushing slightly, before Weiss made a motion with her hand for Pyrrha to continue.

"No, no, you go first. I insist," Pyrrha said softly.

Weiss took another fortifying breath, and then cleared her throat. "A-ahem. Yes. I… spoke with Shirou earlier, after our fight. He, er, brought to light a few… _concerns _that he had, and advised me to speak with you. I'm afraid that I must offer you an apology. I… haven't been the best teammate to you."

"Y-you?" Pyrrha asked, sounding shocked. "I was just about to apologize to you for the same thing…"

They stared at each other for another silent moment before Weiss cracked a small smile. "Well, that's a little awkward."

Pyrrha chuckled lightly. "I suppose it is. Of course Shirou would speak to both of us."

Weiss nodded. "Of course. Still, though, the fault lies with me. I'm sorry, Pyrrha." She paused for a moment to articulate her thoughts before continuing.

"Have I ever told you that I watched all of your fights?"

Pyrrha, slightly startled at the apparent change of topics, shook her head.

"You were amazing," Weiss continued. "Untouchable. You fought head to head against the toughest students in Mistral, and never lost once." She noticed that Pyrrha was starting to look a little uncomfortable at the praise, and sighed again. "Sorry – I'm doing it again, aren't I? What I mean to say is that… you must have been under a lot of pressure. You were famous, and your reputation was built off of your unbroken record. And despite that pressure, you went out and performed impeccably, in every single fight. I was impressed by your skill, of course, but even more than that, I was impressed at how you never seemed to crack under the weight of everyone's expectations."

She looked down at her lap, blush growing. "I saw a lot of parallels between us. You were... kind of a role model to me. But… I put you on a pedestal, and I didn't look any deeper than the surface. I didn't really consider the fact that maybe those pressures were as hard on you as they were on me."

Her voice finally trailed off.

"I'm the one who should be apologizing." Pyrrha's soft voice carried across the room and made Weiss raise her head once more. "You… might not have made the _best _of first impressions," Pyrrha admitted, "but I certainly didn't do anything to improve things either. I had just been so used to people only seeing me for my reputation that when I thought you'd done the same…"

The redhead sighed. "Sorry, Weiss. I gave you no reason to try and see anything besides the mask that I normally wear for fans. If I had, maybe we could have sorted things out sooner…"

Weiss offered her a tentative smile. "But moving forward…?"

Pyrrha smiled back. "Anyone who can give me the kind of fight that you did today is alright in my book, Weiss. Friends?"

Weiss' smile grew. Pyrrha Nikos, the Invincible Girl, champion of the Mistralian arena circuit – but _more _than that, Pyrrha Nikos, the girl who'd given her the fight of her life earlier, her _teammate _for the next four years_,_ wanted to be her friend, even after how poorly Weiss had handled their relationship.

"I'd like that," she said.

o-o-o-o-o

**Thanks for all your patience! Fight scenes typically take a little longer to write, so it took me a while to finish this chapter. For those of you who are interested, Weiss summoning a sword of ice first happens in RWBY s2e12, and elements of Shirou's fight against Pyrrha were inspired by Achilles' fight scenes in Apocrypha.**

**Now that the post-time-skip training sequences are done and it's a little more clear how well everyone is improving, it's time to catch back up with the plot!**

**In other news, this was the first chapter that I've had beta-read before posting it. KyonSmith13 has been an active reader and reviewer from the beginning of this story, and after nearly two-hundred messages between the two of us, he agreed to help me out. He was directly responsible for making this chapter better than it would have been without his influence. I've also just found out how to edit chapters, so if any other mistakes are pointed out, I'll fix them ASAP.**

**Thanks again for reading, and as always I appreciate all your reviews and messages!**


	14. Chapter 14

The streets of Vale were bright.

Countless balloons and streamers of green, blue, orange, and white, the colors of the four kingdoms, festooned nearly every building and hung across every street. Team RESN passed beneath a banner that proclaimed, in bold lettering, 'Welcome to Vale!'

Weiss spun happily as she took in the gaudy decorations, her eyes wide. "Oh, this is absolutely wonderful! I'm so excited for the Vytal festival!"

Ruby put a steadying hand on Weiss' shoulder, smiling. "It's nice to see you so happy, Weiss! You're normally so… not!"

"_Hmph," _Weiss snorted in mock indignation, her smile not faltering in the slightest. "How could I _not _be happy? The Vytal Festival only comes about once every two years! There will be dances, parades, the tournament, obviously… The amount of planning, organization, and hard work that goes into this event is simply breathtaking!"

Pyrrha nodded along as they continued walking. "And all in the name of cooperation between the kingdoms, a celebration of all our distinct cultures. It _is _rather impressive, and that's coming from someone who's seen their fair share of tournaments."

Ruby wrinkled her nose as they neared their destination. "Hey, I like parades and festivals as much as the next person, but why are we headed to the docks? It smells like fish."

Shirou laughed as he joined their conversation. "Well, Weiss is from Atlas, Pyrrha is from Mistral, and we all go to Beacon here in Vale, right?"

Ruby nodded, but still looked confused.

"A lot of students who will be competing in the festival transfer over to spend the last month or so of the semester learning at the academy of the kingdom that's hosting the tournament. The students from Vacuo are supposed to arrive today," he explained.

"And as representatives of Beacon, I feel as though it is our solemn duty to welcome them to this fine kingdom!" Weiss added.

"She wants to spy on them," Shirou clarified.

"You can't prove that!" Weiss called back over her shoulder with a smirk.

Ruby giggled, but a flash of bright yellow caught her eye down a nearby street. She slowed to a halt, and the rest of her teammates stopped with her.

"Bad memories?" Shirou asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

Ruby nodded. Before them, a pair of what appeared to be detectives were busy stringing up a perimeter of yellow caution tape at the entrance to what was clearly a Dust shop.

She approached the men. "What happened here?" she asked.

One of them, sporting a full beard, turned to look her up and down. While young, she was still clad in clothing distinctive of a Huntress, and she clearly wore a mecha-shift weapon at her back. "Robbery," he frowned. "Second Dust shop hit this week. This place is turning into a jungle."

"They left all the money again," his partner called out from inside the store, investigating the cash register.

Ruby sighed. "You still haven't caught him yet?" she asked.

"Him?" the detective asked, suddenly more curious in the group of young Huntsmen in training. "You know who did this?"

The other detective ambled out from the store before Ruby could answer. "Hang on. I know this girl," he commented. "Foiled a Dust robbery earlier this year with one of her friends. Roman Torchwick, wasn't it? Good work, that, especially for a couple of students."

Ruby nodded. "He got away, though. Do you mean this wasn't him?"

The clean-shaven detective grimaced. "I'm afraid not. We've linked him to a few of the robberies last month, but the last few… they don't match his M.O."

He trailed off. His partner sighed and continued for him. "Torchwick is a crook, but he's got a flair for the dramatic. I don't know if he's ever committed a crime without leaving the witnesses as unharmed as possible, and with a clear description of him. Obsessed with infamy – he wants people to know exactly who robbed them, and to spread the word that he's a master thief. If there aren't any witnesses, he's the type to leave a calling card."

The second cop uncomfortably shuffled to one side, futilely attempting to block what Ruby suddenly realized were bloodstains on the shop's floor from her sight.

"No such calling card here, and the owner was… in no shape to talk," the first man continued grimly.

"That's terrible," Pyrrha whispered, eyes wide.

"Main question now is, who would need this much Dust?" the other detective asked.

His partner shrugged. "I don't know. An army?"

"Judging by the…" the detective's eyes once more flickered over to their young audience in concern. "_Exotic _nature of the owner's wounds… you thinking White Fang?"

Weiss gasped.

The first man looked up and down the street nervously, before steering his partner by the shoulder past the yellow tape and into the store. "I'm thinking I don't get paid enough to make those kinds of guesses," he muttered as he did.

Ruby looked in concern to her partner. Weiss looked even paler than normal, all signs of her earlier exuberance gone, and her hands were clenched tightly into fists.

"Weiss? What's wrong?" she asked in concern.

Weiss took a shuddering breath, clearly attempting to regain her composure. "Nothing," she answered tersely. "I simply don't have much love for the _criminally insane_."

"The… White Fang?" Pyrrha asked.

Weiss nodded abruptly and turned to stalk away from the crime scene. "They want to wipe humanity off the face of the planet," she said angrily.

"Hmm," Shirou mused as the rest of the team followed her. "Even if that is true, why would they rob a Dust shop in downtown Vale?"

"They're a bunch of scum," Weiss answered without hesitation, her voice bitter. "I'm not surprised at all. Those Faunus only know how to lie, cheat and steal."

"Hey," Shirou said disapprovingly, reaching out and stopping her with a gentle hand. "You know that's not true of all Faunus." She spun to face him, fire in her eyes. "How do you think Velvet would feel if she heard you say that?" he asked before she could respond.

For a moment, it seemed like she would argue anyways, but after a second, she visibly deflated. The Faunus girl had been helping them with their training ever since Shirou's injury, and had never been anything but polite and helpful.

Weiss sighed. "I suppose you're..."

"Hey! Stop that Faunus!" a cry rang out from in front of them.

Weiss crossed her arms and scowled, suddenly vindicated.

Shirou sighed as well, but joined his team in running towards the sound of the commotion – the docks, just a short way in front of them.

A man with a bright shock of hair, golden enough to nearly rival Yang's, was sprinting along the deck of a newly landed ship. He was followed by a pair of angrily shouting deckhands.

As they watched, he nimbly vaulted onto the railing of the ship, his balance perfect – aided, no doubt, by the long monkey tail that trailed behind him.

"Thanks for the ride, guys!" he laughed before jumping, falling several meters to the docks below easily – a clear sign of Aura training.

Unable to follow, the deckhands could do little else but continue to shout. "You no-good stowaway!"

The Faunus couldn't seem to resist responding to the insult. Slowing to a halt, he jumped into the air, flipping upside-down and twisting before catching himself by the tail on a light-post. "Hey, a 'no-good' stowaway would have been caught!" he shouted back at them as he casually began to peel and eat a banana. "I'm a _great_ stowaway!"

Shirou turned to Weiss. "Well… you wanted to see the competition, right? I think that might be it."

The two detectives from earlier, drawn by the same commotion the students had been, finally made it to where the Faunus was dangling. They were panting slightly.

"Hey!" one of them called. "Get down from there this instant!"

The boy's only response was to giggle and throw his banana peel. It landed with a wet _plop_ on the detective's face as the Faunus vaulted back to his feet and over the pair, resuming his escape.

The detectives gave chase, but it was clear that they had little chance of catching the much more agile boy.

Weiss made to join the chase. "Quick, don't let him get away! We have to observe him!"

Although, it didn't seem like much of a chase would be necessary, considering he was running straight towards them.

Shirou took a step into the boy's way. "Hey, why don't you–"

He was completely ignored. As the Faunus approached them, he made another mighty leap, laughing as he sailed far over their heads.

Shirou sighed, and opened his magic circuits. Well, diplomacy was out.

Weiss growled at having been evaded, and began to sprint after him, followed closely by Shirou and the rest of Team RESN.

The boy ducked into an alley, and Weiss turned after him at high speeds. There was a sound of a heavy impact from around the corner – had the boy set an ambush for them?

Shirou cut around the corner only to see Weiss lying on top of what appeared to be a bystander. He sighed in relief that she hadn't been attacked, and Projected a Black Key. He threw it after the retreating figure of the blonde Faunus, pinning his shadow to the ground just as he made to jump again.

The boy let out a startled yell as his leap was prematurely aborted, and he toppled to the ground without his feet ever leaving it.

Shirou moved to Weiss' side and gently lifted her off of her accidental victim, helping the blushing heiress to her feet. Behind them, Ruby giggled.

"Salutations!" the girl beneath Weiss smiled and waved happily as she was freed. She had short, curly orange hair and bright green eyes.

Shirou gasped.

"I'm so sorry," Weiss apologized as she dusted herself off. "I was in such a hurry to catch that rapscallion…" She looked down the alley to where the Faunus was straining heavily to pull the dagger out of the ground with both hands to no avail. "Are you alright?" she asked the girl.

"I'm wonderful! Thank you for asking!" the girl responded from the ground, still making no move to get up.

The detectives turned the corner of the alley and took in the situation, hurriedly moving to apprehend the Faunus. "Good work, kids," the clean-shaven one said as he hurried past them.

Shirou continued to stare silently at the girl_. _

"Do you… need help getting up?" Pyrrha offered her with a faint smile.

"Not at all, but thank you for asking!" she declared excitedly, before performing a textbook kip-up and landing easily on her feet. "My name is Penny! It's a pleasure to meet you!" She dusted off her outfit, a pair of sleek grey overalls with neon green highlights worn over a white blouse.

"Hi Penny! I'm Ruby!" Their leader took the initiative and offered a greeting to the decidedly strange girl.

"Weiss."

"Hello, I'm Pyrrha!"

Shirou continued to stare.

Pyrrha gently nudged him with her elbow.

Shirou stared on, eyes wide. How could he not?

Her body was of steel, and rather than blood, fire ran through her metallic veins. Her prana smelled of iron, like Pyrrha's, but with an undertone of sweet-smelling oil, like that used to maintain a weapon. And… her body was filled with swords.

She was a _machine._ And yet, somehow, she was also alive – he wasn't sure how, even after he instinctively Analyzed her body, but she was producing od and converting it to prana the same way that he did, the same way any Huntsman or Huntress did. It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before.

The swords were all the same, in a way – or they were all part of a set? Except the set that they belonged to _was _the girl in front of him, somehow. It was incredibly strange – as though some part of him adamantly wanted to record the girl within his Reality Marble, and another part of him insisted that it was impossible, because she was a living person.

Eventually, a metaphysical consensus was reached, and a collection of fourteen blades was copied to his soul, all connected to cables and wires that somehow felt empty without the girl that was missing at the other end. Additionally, they would be impossible to wield using their intended style by _anybody _besides the girl before him, including Shirou – it wasn't a matter of lacking the skills to do so, just an inherent lack of capability, of not having the right… parts.

The girl – Penny Polendina – was connected to her swords intimately, in a way that was both incredibly familiar and incomprehensibly foreign to Shirou.

For what may have been the first time in his life, Shirou had an inkling of an understanding of how most proper magi felt when presented with an incredibly interesting research specimen, one relevant to their own field of study. Not that he wanted to dissect her, or anything that extreme, but… he wanted, _needed_ to know more about her.

Pyrrha elbowed him again, harder this time, snapping him out of his thoughts.

"Oh, sorry! I'm Shirou! It's a pleasure to meet you as well!" He bent at his waist in a polite bow, and straightened with a wide smile.

Penny took a step towards him, matching his smile. "It's a pleasure to meet you, too!"

"You already said that," Weiss pointed out as she narrowed her eyes slightly.

In fact, watching Shirou and Penny stare into each-other's eyes with such sincere smiles, all three girls of Team RESN seemed to be slightly on edge.

"So I did!" Penny agreed happily.

"Well, now that it appears the stowaway has been apprehended…" Weiss looked further down the alleyway towards where the two detectives were attempting to escort the Faunus away, only to be thwarted by the dagger still pinning his shadow to the ground. "Perhaps we should go question him? Sorry again for running into you."

Pyrrha made to follow Weiss, grabbing Shirou's arm as she did. Even as she pulled him away, however, his eyes remained locked on Penny.

"Take care, friend!" Ruby hesitantly waved as she took Shirou's other arm and began to help Pyrrha drag him away from the strange girl.

In a blur of motion, nearly fast enough to rival Ruby, Penny suddenly dashed around in front of them, now staring intently at Ruby.

"_What _did you call me?"

"_Eek!" _Ruby let out a startled yelp and jumped backwards at the sudden movement, arms raised as if to awkwardly perform a karate chop, but she lowered them again as she realized it wasn't a threat. "I-I'm sorry? I don't think I…"

"_Friend. _You called me friend! Am I _really _your _friend_?!"

Behind the apparently excitable girl, Weiss rapidly shook her head, and Pyrrha winced.

Before Ruby had a chance to answer, however, Shirou was at her side. "Of course! Yes! We're all friends here!" he blurted out, uncharacteristically awkward.

"Sen_sational_!" the girl exclaimed, either not noticing or not caring about Shirou's strangeness. "We can paint our nails, and try on clothes," she said, looking at Ruby, before turning her gaze once more upon Shirou, "and talk about–"

"Swords!" he exclaimed.

"I _love _swords!" Penny agreed.

Ruby shakily smiled. Maybe she wasn't that bad after all? That did kind of sound fun. "So, Penny… what are you doing in Vale?"

"I've come here to fight in the tournament!" the cheerful redhead answered.

"O-oh! I meant the city, as in, um, what are you doing today… but the kingdom works too! Where are you from?"

"I'm a representative of Atlas Academy!" Penny fired off a perfect military salute. "I'm combat ready!"

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? I don't recall seeing you at the Atlas Academy Preparatory School."

Ruby looked incredulously at her partner. "That's what it's called?"

Weiss' cheeks took on a rosy tint. "Not every kingdom needs fancy, abstract names for their schools!"

"That would be because I never attended that school!" Penny explained, ignoring their by-play. "In fact, I'm a new addition to Atlas Academy's ranks!"

Weiss seemed to accept the girl's excuse, and sank into a curtsy. "In that case, let me welcome you to Vale. We are students of Beacon."

"Thank you, Weiss! I'm sure it will be a pleasure to face you all in the tournament!"

Pyrrha smiled as well. "I'm sure it will! However, we _do _have a… criminal, I suppose, to go help with, so…" Her voice trailed off, and she once more began to try and steer Shirou away.

"A _criminal?! _Oh, no! Don't worry, friends! I'll assist you!" Penny said as she began to follow them.

"Thank you for the offer," Weiss said, her polite tone taking on a hint of dryness, "but I think we can handle –"

"That sounds great! Thanks, Penny!" Shirou cut her off. His fellow redhead happily fell into step beside him, both of them uncaring to the sighs of his teammates.

"...I'm trying, I swear! It's not my fault!" the monkey Faunus was protesting loudly to the two detectives. They'd cuffed his hands behind his back, but all attempts to lead him away were still being inhibited by the Black Key, and the officers were looking fairly annoyed.

"Sorry about that, officers," Shirou apologized as he approached and allowed the dagger to dissipate into motes of light.

The Faunus shot him a grin that was surprisingly mirthful, considering the fact that he was being arrested. "So, that was yours? Neat trick, man! You guys must be Huntsmen students too?"

Weiss strode up directly in front of him and lifted a finger to his face. "You! You dare call yourself a Huntsman after the stunt you pulled?"

His eyebrows shot up. "Whoa, calm down, lady. What's got you all hot under the collar?"

Weiss narrowed her eyes. "My collar is _perfectly _cool, thank you _very _much. I can't believe that a fellow student would stoop to such base, degenerate actions!"

"Uh, miss?" the bearded detective cut off her rant. "It's not like he murdered someone here. We were just going to bring him back to the docks and make him pay for his ticket before letting him off with a warning."

Weiss seemed shocked – like she didn't understand. For a moment just long enough to be awkward, she stared at the detective – and when she whirled back to the faunus, it wasn't him that she addressed.

"You would just… let him go? This criminal, this…" Her voice was hurt, confused. She took a step back, but her tone remained accusatory. "You… You're one of them, aren't you? You're just waiting to be released, so you can report back to your masters, tell them how lax the Vale Police Department has–"

Shirou stopped her. A firm hand grabbed her arm, and spun her towards him.

He wrapped her in a tight embrace, and she shuddered.

"Weiss," he said, his voice full of concerned warmth. That… it was all she needed, really.

"She's had a rough day," he explained to the two officers and the Faunus.

They seemed to understand – the young man offered him a worried nod as he was led away. "No hard feelings, man. Hopefully I'll see you guys around Beacon, yeah?"

Shirou nodded back. He _also _noticed that the boy's prehensile tail had managed to hook onto one of the detective's key rings, but he declined to mention the fact to the policemen – he had a more pressing matter to attend to than a minor stowaway who really was taking Weiss' outburst admirably well.

Shirou had forgone his armor, when they set out for the city. That choice made it far easier to notice Weiss' tears as they dampened his shirt.

Still, when she spoke, her voice was even and steady. "I'd like to go home now," she said into Shirou's chest, her voice muffled.

He glanced over at his teammates – and at Penny.

The strange girl was unique, interesting, and _so _similar to himself – but Weiss took priority.

He offered Penny an apologetic look, and the girl nodded. Glad that she seemingly understood, he rubbed Weiss' back gently.

"Sure. Let's go home. It was nice to meet you, Penny."

o-o-o-o-o

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ruby asked.

She sat next to her partner on Weiss' bunk. Shirou sat on her other side, and Pyrrha hovered nearby worriedly.

Weiss had been uncharacteristically silent for their entire journey back to the school. Finally, she sighed. "First of all, I would like to apologize to all of you. I… wasn't thinking, and my unsightly outburst–"

"Everyone has bad days, Weiss. It's alright," Ruby interrupted her.

"You don't have to be perfect all the time," Pyrrha added gently.

Weiss blinked, as if the concept of not needing to be perfect was foreign to her. "T-thank you. Really."

"I take it you have a history with the White Fang?" Shirou prompted softly.

For a moment, Weiss hesitated, taking a moment to look around at each of their faces. Whatever she saw, it convinced her to speak.

"I'm one of their victims," she admitted. "I have been since I was a young child. They've been at war with my family for years, and I mean that literally – actual bloodshed. For as long as I can remember, my grandfather's company has had a target painted across its back, been under siege. Shops selling our Dust robbed, Bullheads shot out of the sky, even entire train cars full of Dust stolen. Even worse? Board members kidnapped and executed_. _Family friends, people I grew up with, disappearing_._"

Shirou's eyes narrowed in anger, even as he and Ruby both pressed closer against Weiss to offer what comfort they could to the distraught girl. "That sounds terrible, Weiss. I had no idea."

He truly hadn't. From the history of Blake's weapon, his mental image of the Fang had been that they were a misguided, but ultimately relatively nonviolent group, insofar as any terrorist organization could be. They stole, sure, but Blake had spent the majority of her time with them battling autonomous security drones – she certainly hadn't ever stooped to kidnapping or murder.

"It… it was." Weiss sighed. "It made for a very difficult childhood – even beyond the stifling security measures I had to live behind, my father was almost never in a good mood, and he… often made his displeasure known to the rest of our family."

Shirou grimaced at the implications. "I can see why you reacted the way you did."

"Weiss…" Ruby began. "If it is the White Fang that's been robbing shops in Vale…"

Weiss turned to meet her silver eyes with a steely expression. "I'd want to stop them."

"You don't think that's something better left to the Vale police?" Pyrrha asked.

"They haven't been doing too great of a job so far, have they?" Shirou pointed out.

"And we are in school to help protect people!" Ruby added with a smile.

"That's true, but we don't even know if it was even them," Pyrrha said. "If it is, though…"

"Then we're with you, Weiss." Shirou finished.

Weiss smiled. "Thank you, all of you."

"We'll need to do a little investigative work first, though," he said.

"We could hit the library? Check out recent newspapers, see if we can make any connections?" Pyrrha suggested.

Ruby nodded. "Sure! First thing tomorrow, let's go!"

o-o-o-o-o

Blake rubbed at the heavy bags under her eyes and took a sip from a half full mug of coffee that had long since run cold, staring blearily down at the collected newspaper clippings that scattered the desk in front of her.

There was just so little information available. Her own past knowledge of the White Fang was hopelessly out of date, useless to her now. What few articles even suggested the possibility that the Fang might have been behind the recent robberies left hardly any hints as to their numbers, their strength, or what equipment they might have available. No clue to what use they could possibly have for Dust, either. Not to mention, not a single mention of Torchwick and the Fang working in concert. She _refused _to believe that was true.

She'd been poring over them all week, looking for anything that might give her an edge. She'd barely slept, barely interacted with her team outside of scheduled sparring. Speaking of not sleeping, she glanced down at her Scroll.

Two in the morning. Sunday.

The library had long since closed, but that was hardly an issue to an accomplished infiltrator like her, and it wasn't as if she needed light to see anyways.

She sighed. The day had come, and she had barely any more information than when she'd started. But… she had to see for herself.

She wasn't even sure what she would do if she found them. She sincerely hoped that whatever was happening at the docks was benign, perhaps a rally or a recruitment drive… but the sinking sensation in her stomach told her that if that was true, they wouldn't be trying to pull in muscle like Tukson.

If it was something illegal, would she stop them? If they were working alone?

And if they weren't?

She needed to know if what Tukson said about Torchwick was true. She needed more information. She needed to scope out the docks before the time arrived, find good vantage points and possible ambush locations…

She needed so many things. A nap was probably one of them… but there was so little time left. Less than a day.

Half in a daze, she stood from the table, not even bothering to clean up her mess. The time for research was up. Now was the time for action.

She silently slipped out the door of the library and began to make her way towards Vale.

o-o-o-o-o

"Yang? It's not like you to go to the library this early," Ruby called out as Team RESN walked in.

The blonde was sitting at a desk strewn with paper, staring down at it and talking quietly into her Scroll. She looked up at the sound of her name before standing and making her way over towards them, hanging up her Scroll as she did.

She looked grim. "Ruby. Hey, guys."

"What's wrong?" Ruby asked, immediately concerned.

Yang sighed. "Blake didn't come back to the room last night. She blew me off when I tried to talk to her yesterday, told me that I 'wouldn't understand' and to leave her alone to work. I thought she might have dozed off here, so I came to check when I woke up, but…"

She gestured around the obviously empty library. "Nope. And she won't answer her scroll. All I could find were a bunch of newspapers, all about recent Dust robberies."

Shirou blinked. "That's… convenient. Not the Blake part, obviously, but the newspapers – that's actually why we're here."

Yang raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? If you have some idea what's going on, we'd be happy for the help – I just called Ren, he and Nora are on their way too."

"Of course, we'd be happy to help you find Blake! Right, guys?" Ruby asked.

Shirou nodded. "Mind if we take a look?"

"Be my guest," Yang said with another gesture towards the table.

Shirou and Weiss moved to look it over while Ruby and Pyrrha stayed to fill in Yang. He picked up one of the clippings at random and scanned it as Weiss did the same.

"Hmm. A few weeks ago. 'White Fang' is underlined, as is the address of the shop hit," he said.

Weiss scowled. "Same here, from last month. Also mentions the White Fang."

"Looks like Blake might have done our research for us," Shirou said.

Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Why, though? I have a hard time believing anyone in Beacon would feel strongly enough about the White Fang to do this besides me."

"You might be surprised. You can ask her about it when we find her."

They looked over as the door swung open once more, Ren and Nora stepping through, and moved to rejoin their teammates.

"What did you find?" Ruby asked.

"She's been researching the White Fang," Shirou confirmed.

"That doesn't explain why she's missing, though…" Pyrrha said.

Nora gasped. "You don't think she's been kidnapped, do you?"

Ren shook his head. "Unlikely. Not from Beacon, not without a struggle."

Shirou nodded. "I agree. If she found something, though, some kind of pattern or clue as to where she thinks they'll hit next… She clearly feels strongly enough about them to do all this research. She might have gone off to try and do something about it."

"Alone?" Yang sounded hurt. "Why wouldn't she come to us with something that big? We're supposed to be a team."

Nora frowned – it looked sadly out of place on what was usually such a bubbly face. "I just hope she's alright…"

Ren hesitated for a moment before coming to a decision and nodding. "I'll stay here and look over her research, see if I can't find any clue or hint about where she might have gone. Yang, Nora, you two head into Vale and look for her."

"What about us?" Ruby asked. "We want to help too!"

Ren blinked, and then nodded. "Thank you. I didn't want to assume. Having more eyes looking for her would be greatly appreciated. I'll stay in contact with you all through your Scrolls, and keep trying to call Blake."

"Thanks, Ren," said Yang, rubbing a hand through her thick hair and sighing. "Sorry for dragging you all into this, guys. She's my partner… I guess I messed up."

Shirou shook his head. "Not at all, Yang. She's our friend too."

Weiss nodded in support. "Besides, we were going to do something similar ourselves. It's no inconvenience, especially if she actually found something."

Yang gave them a wide smile, but it looked slightly forced. "Thanks, guys. Really."

Ruby smiled back. "We'll find her, Yang. Come on, guys – let's get to Vale!"

o-o-o-o-o

"We should split up, to cover more ground," Weiss suggested as they stepped off the Bullhead onto the busy landing pad in the center of Vale's commercial district.

"Good idea, Weiss!" Ruby agreed as she moved to stand beside her partner.

Nora threw an arm around Yang, and Pyrrha and Shirou shared a smile and a nod.

"Where should we start?" Shirou asked.

"Don't worry, I got this!" Nora said as she pulled out her Scroll, rapidly dialing Ren and putting it on speaker. "Boop! This is Agent Valkyrie, contacting Mission Control! Do you copy, over?"

"Nora… this isn't a radio. You don't need to say over."

"I don't need to say what, over?"

It was silent for a moment before Ren sighed. "You don't need to say over. Over."

Nora giggled. "Alright, Ren. We're here! Where should we look?"

"I've had a chance to map out some of the incidents. I still have a fair amount to go, but it seems like the majority of them took place in either the commercial district, where most of the Dust shops are, and the industrial district, where Dust was stolen directly from warehouses."

Yang hummed. "Well, the industrial district is split down the middle by the river. We can have one team stay here, and one for each side of the river?"

Nora nodded. "Sounds good to me! Thanks, Renny!"

"Keep me updated. Good luck," Ren said before hanging up.

"I guess we'll take the commercial district," Yang said. "I'm in a hurry to get started."

"Ruby and I will take the north side of the river, I suppose," Weiss said.

"Alright, south it is," Pyrrha accepted. "Let's get started."

They said their goodbyes and headed off in different directions.

o-o-o-o-o

"I've never really searched for a missing person before," Pyrrha admitted to Shirou after a short time. "What exactly do we do? Just call her name?"

Shirou shrugged. "I haven't either, but I suppose it couldn't hurt. Or actually… maybe it could. If she doesn't want to be found, that might work against us."

"You think she doesn't want to be found?"

"Well… she didn't tell anyone where she was going, and her Scroll is off, so…"

Pyrrha frowned. "Why would she act like this? Surely she knows her team is worried about her."

"Could be a few reasons." He shrugged again. "Maybe she's worried about them too, and trying to keep them safe, or maybe she just strongly feels that this is something she needs to do on her own."

"Why, though? Some kind of personal vendetta?"

Shirou frowned. "I think I might have an idea, but it's not really my secret to tell. Even I shouldn't know it – I kind of accidentally learned some of her history off of her weapon."

Pyrrha looked conflicted. "Do you think keeping her secret might put her in danger?"

Shirou sighed. "I don't know. I don't think sharing it would help us find her any faster, at least – and it might upset Weiss if she heard about it in the wrong circumstances."

Pyrrha was silent for a while as she digested the implications of his statement. "I see. So, if not calling for her, what should we do?"

"Calling for whom?" A bright voice asked from behind them.

Startled, the two redheads turned – to see a third. "Oh, Penny! Where did you come from?" Shirou asked with a smile. Pyrrha didn't look quite as happy to see her.

"Greetings, Shirou, Pyrrha! I just saw you walking, and I thought I'd come over! What are you up to?"

"We're looking for our friend, Blake. She's Ruby's sister's partner. You haven't seen a girl with black hair and yellow eyes, probably dressed in black and white, wears a big black bow?" Shirou asked.

"I'm sorry, friends, I have not! Why are you looking for her?"

"She went missing last night," Pyrrha explained. "We're pretty sure she's somewhere in Vale."

Penny gasped loudly. "Missing?! That's terrible! What happened?"

"We're still trying to find out," Shirou said. "It might have something to do with the White Fang."

Another gasp. "The Faunus terrorist group? Oh no! Don't worry, friends!" She gave another of her crisp military salutes. "I won't rest until we find your _other _friend!"

"That's alright, Penny, you don't have–" Pyrrha started.

"We'd love your help!" Shirou finished.

Pyrrha's face fell slightly, but she forced a small smile. "Sure, why not."

o-o-o-o-o

Pyrrha internally sighed. They'd been searching all day, questioning just about everybody they saw and searching through abandoned warehouses, and they hadn't found even a hint of Blake.

What was maybe just as bad – even though she felt guilty for thinking it – Shirou seemed to chat as easily with Penny as he did with their team, with her – if not even better!

Despite the unfortunate circumstances, she'd been looking forward to spending the day with Shirou. _Alone. _It wasn't often that they had much time together, apart from their sparring sessions, and although those were intimate in a certain way… she would have enjoyed a day just walking through Vale together.

She wasn't blind, after all. She'd seen the looks that Ruby often directed towards Shirou, especially when he wasn't looking. She imagined they were fairly similar to her own. Lately, unless she was imagining things, even Weiss had been looking at him differently!

It wasn't fair! Weiss had him all to herself in combat class, in addition to extracurricular team sparring, and Ruby used him to feed her cookie addiction! If she didn't find some way to compete with them, she might fall behind!

So, who was this girl to intrude on her rare quality time with her partner?

There was a lull in the conversation that she hadn't been fully participating in anyways – the perfect time to strike.

"So, Penny. It seems like you make friends really easily!" Forced cheer came easily to Pyrrha, and she prided herself on it being practically indistinguishable from the real thing. "What's your secret?"

Penny's eyes opened almost comically wide in surprise, accompanied by a genuine smile. "Oh, no, not at all! In fact, I have very few friends! It made me extremely happy when Ruby and Shirou made it clear that your team and I were friends!"

Another internal sigh. It was really hard to dislike the girl when she made such sad statements with such an innocent expression. "Oh, nonsense. You seem like a very likable girl," she replied instinctively, prompting yet another mental exclamation of dismay.

Penny positively beamed. "Truly? Oh, I'm so glad you think so! Many of my other attempts to make friends have failed horribly!"

_Damn it, _she was like a puppy! A horrifically socially awkward puppy!

Luckily, Shirou interrupted before Pyrrha could be won over completely by Penny's joyous emerald eyes – which, Pyrrha noted, with perhaps a hint of envy, seemed to shine even brighter than her own.

"Really?" he asked incredulously. "I can't imagine why. I agree with Pyrrha completely – I can't imagine not wanting to be your friend!"

Or perhaps not so luckily. Pyrrha suppressed a growl – apparently, Shirou had already been won over.

"Still, though," she argued weakly, "there must be some reason _we _feel that way, right Shirou?"

If she knew what about her exactly seemed to draw Shirou to her, she might be able to counter it – or even do it better herself!

Shirou took a moment to look over Penny once more, who waited, smiling, patiently for his assessment. "Hmm. Well, for me, at least…" A slight blush colored his slightly tanned features, a fairly uncommon occurrence for him. "If I'm being honest, something about Penny reminds me a lot of myself. I have a feeling we're really similar."

"Ah, I see!" Penny nodded happily. "We have the same shade of hair color!"

Shirou laughed. "No, Penny. More than that, although I suppose that's a coincidence as well."

Pyrrha felt a faint blossom of hope unfurl somewhere in her chest – one that might not have arisen in most. However, for someone like her, whose brain was conditioned to think in terms of magnetism… Didn't like _repel _like, whereas opposites attracted one another?

"What do you mean, she reminds you of yourself?"

Shirou's blush deepened slightly more – and wasn't that an adorable look on him? Pyrrha imperceptibly shook her head to clear her thoughts and listen to his response.

"It's embarrassing to say, honestly," he admitted, rubbing the back of his head – a (cute) nervous habit he had, Pyrrha had noticed. "Especially considering I already have one… but I can't help but feel like Penny's… something like a long-lost sister."

Pyrrha felt the familiar flush of triumph that often accompanied a win in the arena. She'd been right! Shirou wasn't attracted to Penny romantically – just platonically! And either way, with any luck… such a bold statement would serve to unsettle the strange girl as well, and allow Pyrrha to… what, exactly? She wasn't exactly sure, but it still felt like a victory.

In fact, Penny's eyes had once more widened to their fullest, and she was staring at Shirou with undisguised shock. She took a nervous step… towards him?

Hmm. That wasn't expected.

"You… see me as a… sister?"

Well, there was the predicted surprise, but why was she taking _another _step towards him?

"I've never even _imagined _having a brother before," Penny said breathlessly. "That's even better than having a friend… isn't it?" she asked, nervousness entering her voice for the first time.

Shirou smiled back at Penny sheepishly – although, if Pyrrha wasn't imagining it, there was the tiniest hint of sadness in his eyes as well. "It can be," he said quietly.

For a moment, Pyrrha thought that Penny would lunge forward into a hug – but instead, she took a long step back, smiling as radiantly as she had been before the conversation even began. "Well then, I'm glad that you feel that way!" She took a brief pause, looking contemplative. "But… should I refer to you as my friend, or as my brother? This does seem rather sudden!"

Pyrrha smiled. So, Penny _had _noticed!

Shirou just laughed again, as if he understood something that Pyrrha hadn't. "For now, Penny, we can just be friends. But… I'm sure that the more time we spend together, the more you'll find that we're more similar than you realize."

_And wasn't _that _cryptic,_ Pyrrha thought. Surely, he couldn't be referring to…

_**BOOM! **_

Suddenly, the unmistakable sound of an explosion rent the air. All three students whirled in unison to face its source – from which a plume of thick black smoke was rising into the air, in the direction of the docks.

"Oh, no…" Pyrrha whispered.

Shirou's eyes narrowed, and his voice rang out with certainty. "Blake."

o-o-o-o-o

**Hey everyone, thanks for sticking with me even though it took me a long time to get this chapter right! Setting things up the way I wanted it for future chapters and introducing new characters is starting to become something that takes a little more time to plan out and implement, but hopefully it should make things easier going forwards. **

**Thanks a lot for everyone's reviews and messages, and thanks again to KyonSmith13 for his work proofreading and helping me think things through!**

**Also, huge shout-out to Alex Kellar, who has published this fic's first fan art on his deviantart page! A quick google of his name should take you to his gallery (Sorry, I'm not allowed to post links on this site), so make sure to go visit him and show some appreciation for his awesome work!**


	15. Chapter 15

"_Bleeuuurghh…"_

"Just let it out, kid," Roman said, somehow managing to come off as simultaneously comforting, disgusted, and disinterested. For a moment, he lifted his hand, as if to consider… but, no, such things were beneath him. "Hey, you. Be a good boy and pat his back for me," he ordered, gesturing at the masked man sitting on Jaune's other side.

As the Faunus growled and reached over to comply, the blonde boy looked up from his bucket, face still green. "Thanks, Roma_uuurghh…" _he managed to get out before hiding his face once more.

"Sorry, sir," he groaned after he'd finished. "Motion sickness is actually a really common problem, I swear..."

Roman rolled his eyes as the boy once more buried in face in his bucket, which was rapidly filling up. "Not an issue, kid. As long as you're good to go when we get there, at least."

Jaune gave him a shaky thumbs up. "I will be, sir," he managed.

"If this is just nerves…" one of the other masked members of the White Fang grumbled.

"Perish the thought," Roman declared as he made a sweeping gesture with his arm. "My friend Jaune here is a consummate professional. Rest assured, this operation is safe in our capable hands."

Jaune looked blearily around the interior of the packed Bullhead. "With respect, sir, do you really think we needed to hire so many private security contractors?"

Roman sent the young man one of his winning smiles. "You never know, kid! Even for a routine Dust shipment pickup like this, there are all sorts of ne'er-do-wells who might try to take advantage of us! Remember what I told you?"

Jaune nodded, but the motion only served to set him off again.

"Just to make sure, I'll go over it one more time." Roman sent pointed glances around towards the White Fang members, a silent threat to ensure they didn't contradict him in front of the impressionable boy. "A huge portion of the Vale Police Department is corrupt, and there's a good chance they might try to stop us law-abiding Huntsmen from carrying out our duty and steal all this Dust for themselves. Same goes for other Huntsmen – you never know who a corrupt cop might have paid off, or just plain fed misinformation to. If anyone gets involved, you keep them busy while we secure the cargo, got it?"

Jaune sent him a thumbs up, his face still buried in the bucket.

Dealing with the kid was an interesting balancing act. Roman hadn't yet brought him along for anything _blatantly _illegal, like robbing store owners, and the last few warehouse raids – 'cargo transportation jobs' to Jaune – had gone off without a hitch, so at this point the boy actually thought he was doing legitimate work. Still, this was the biggest operation Jaune had been involved with to date, and whichever way you cut it, this many Bullheads in one place was going to attract some attention, so there was a good chance this would be his trial-by-fire.

He had high hopes for the kid, actually. Junior hadn't been kidding – when you got him going, he was damn near unstoppable. Neo had taken an instant liking to him after their first spar – he hadn't managed to even come close to landing a hit on her, of course, but she seemed to appreciate the spark of madness in his eyes. There was also the fact that he never complained about her brutal training methods, and actually actively asked for more – which was a first for _anyone _as far as Roman knew. In the brief months since he'd hired the boy, Jaune had thrown himself into Neo's 'Huntsman training crash-course' whole-heartedly.

He still sucked, of course. That was kind of inevitable when you considered he'd never had any actual training before that. Still, though, there was more to a fight than pure skill, and Jaune had spirit in spades.

As long as he could keep up the facade of being a legitimate Huntsman, Roman had found himself a potentially _very_ useful pawn. Even better was that Cinder didn't know he had it.

The Bullhead finally touched down and deployed a boarding ramp. Jaune sighed in relief at the fresh air – and he wasn't the only one. The White Fang members, many of them with superhuman senses of smell, hurriedly evacuated the reeking vehicle.

Roman took a moment to stretch, and to make sure his hair still looked perfect, before standing and making his own way off the Bullhead, Jaune trailing behind him. The boy still wore the uniform of Junior's men, a sleek black suit with a bright red tie and a pair of red reflective sunglasses, but Roman had made sure to update the outfit to his specifications. He now also sported a bowler cap very similar to Roman's own, as well as a red scarf worn like a bandana to cover his lower face, which he pulled up after he was finished wiping his mouth.

Naturally, the additions to the outfit were meant to help conceal the kid's identity, but Roman hadn't had a hard time convincing Jaune that it was just in the nature of Huntsmen to dress in extravagant, brightly colored clothing.

"Hey! What's the hold up?" Roman called as he stepped onto the ground. "We're not exactly the most inconspicuous group at the moment, so get those tow cables and pick up the pace!"

They complied, albeit with a small amount of grumbling. That was another thing he liked about Jaune – the kid never grumbled. Speaking of him, though… "Jaune. You should probably go empty that bucket."

With a sheepish nod, the kid grabbed the bucket and set off towards the edge of the docks.

Roman glanced around at the four Fang members he'd brought in his Bullhead, where they were busy setting up the cables so the rest of the Bullheads could easily take off with the goods. He rolled his eyes and sighed as he angrily strode over to one who was doing a _particularly _incompetent job with his. "No, you idiot! This isn't a leash!"

He made to reach out and snatch it away so he could attach the hook properly himself, but there was a rush of air behind him, and suddenly he felt a cool edge of steel pressed against his neck.

"Wha–" His eyes flicked to one side, catching a glimpse of a young female face out of his peripheral vision. "Oh, for fu–"

"Nobody move!" she cut him off, glaring around at the four henchmen.

They immediately ignored her order, all four of them drawing weapons and pointing them towards him.

Roman had a feeling they really wouldn't mind perforating him along with his temporary captor. "Whoa! Take it easy there, little lady," he said calmly.

As the Fang soldiers took another menacing step forward, she did something with her free hand behind his head that he couldn't quite make out before speaking again. "Brothers of the White Fang!" she declared, her voice imperious. "Why are you aiding this scum?!"

Hmm. That was interesting – as was the fact that the grunts he'd brought lowered their weapons slightly at her words. Of all the kinds of trouble Roman had been expecting tonight, he hadn't thought it would come from the Fang. "Oh, kid. Didn't you get the memo?" he asked. If she was merely out of the loop, he might be able to talk her down. "The White Fang and I are going in on a joint business venture together," he said, still moderating his voice.

"What are you talking about? Tell me what it is, or I'll put an end to your little operation!" she demanded, increasing the pressure on the blade at his throat.

Roman chuckled lightly – the sound of Bullhead turbines was rapidly approaching. "First of all, kid, I wouldn't exactly call it a _little _operation," he said, looking up at the two new aircraft as they began to hover above the docks.

"Second…" he paused for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was noticeably louder than before. "I can't believe a self-declared member of a terrorist organization is holding me hostage!" he exclaimed with a wide smile.

"What?" she asked in confusion at the seemingly obvious statement.

An instant later, her ears twitched at the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. She spun, just in time for a fist to hit her in the face with surprising strength, sending her toppling backwards onto the ground.

She groaned and clutched her nose where she lay as Roman dusted himself off.

"Are you alright, sir?" Jaune asked in genuine concern, shaking out his fist.

"Thanks for the save, kid," Roman said with a grin. "And of course I am. Because _third,_ kitty-cat," he said as he sauntered over towards the girl, taking in her second pair of ears. "I have _Aura_, you idiot. You couldn't have slit my throat if you'd tried." He lowered Melodic Cudgel's barrel towards her from a few meters away. "Explosions, however, are a little harder to deal with."

The girl's yellow eyes widened as he pulled the trigger. For a moment, he thought he'd gotten her with the Dust flare he fired – but she blurred away at the last second, leaving behind some kind of double to take the hit for her. She sprinted off to one side, and he tracked her with his weapon as she did, squeezing off several more shots.

In an impressive display of gymnastic skill, she dodged each of them in a series of rolls, flips, and handsprings, somehow managing to scoop up her own fallen weapon as she did. The final shot burst through a clone where she'd been standing an instant before, sailing onwards and into the side of a shipping container clearly labeled 'SDC.'

She darted out of sight behind another stack of containers as the one that he'd shot exploded into a massive fireball.

Roman grimaced at the plume of smoke as another couple of squads of White Fang soldiers dropped down from their Bullheads. He gestured at them with his cane. "Alright, you lot, hurry up! We're working on a timer now!" He turned towards Jaune. "Kid, you're with me. We're going to chase down our little terrorist friend, alright? Remember, people like her are no better than the Grimm!"

The boy nodded, the hint of mania already visible even behind his tinted shades.

Roman smiled as he began to slowly walk towards where the Faunus girl had run off to. "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty…"

o-o-o-o-o

Shirou, Pyrrha, and Penny leapt across another alleyway, sprinting across the roof of another warehouse. They'd taken to the rooftops in order to travel more directly towards the still rising plume of smoke.

It had only been a few minutes since the explosion, but they were all grimly aware that in a fight, minutes could mean the difference between life and death.

Finally, they came to a halt on one of the warehouses directly overlooking the docks.

Pyrrha gasped as they took in the scene below them. A couple dozen men in white tunics and metal masks were hard at work securing cables to several huge shipping containers. "Is that…?"

"The emblem on the backs of their tunics indicates that they are members of the White Fang," Penny said, uncharacteristically seriously.

"Blake," Shirou said, his eyes fixed on the far side of the docks. Pyrrha strained her eyes to make out the girl in question, apparently fighting a defensive battle against two figures, one in black and one in white. "Penny and I will clear a path – Pyrrha, you get to Blake. Ready?"

Penny nodded, all the confirmation that Shirou needed, and the two immediately leapt off the rooftop.

Shirou's arm lit up with the tell-tale glow of his Semblance, and Pyrrha noticed a small backpack on Penny's back slide open – had she always been wearing that? A moment later, Pyrrha followed them down.

It occurred to her as she jumped that she had never seen Shirou fight. Not really. She'd seen him _spar, _she'd seen him practically toy with Grimm, and she supposed that once, she'd seen him pull a desperate gambit when he was already on the verge of death, but never had she seen a healthy, serious Shirou engage real enemies.

As the boy hit the ground in front of her without breaking stride and sprang into action, she finally realized the difference.

He threw his arms to his sides, fingers splayed, but rather than summon swords to his hands, as she'd been expecting, the very air above and behind him began to shimmer with familiar blue light. Pyrrha's eyes widened as a _dozen_ blades manifested simultaneously, a mix of simple straight swords and cutlasses.

To Shirou's right, Penny's backpack split open, and another sword slid out and unfolded – before somehow splitting itself apart lengthwise many times over. An instant later, she too was surrounded by a corona of blades that somehow stayed suspended in the air behind her.

They moved as one, before the White Fang had barely any time to react. The instant Shirou's swords finished coalescing, he gestured with his arm and they launched forwards with unerring accuracy, slicing through the air towards the nearest enemies. At his side, Penny spun like a dancer, her own swords slicing out like an oversized fan and knocking aside the grunt who had the misfortune of standing closest to her landing point, before she directed them to shoot forwards like javelins.

The two storms of blades found easy targets in the remainder of the White Fang.

They must have all had Aura, Pyrrha assumed, because there was no other way that she could reconcile the efficient brutality with which Shirou and Penny dealt with the terrorists. In seconds, the two of them cut through ten men, each of them pelted by two or three swords flying at breakneck speeds. Sure enough, she was treated to a brief lightshow as Aura flared up and was broken on each of the Faunus struck, leaving the unfortunate targets unconscious as they were thrown back against crates and walls by the force of the blades.

Pyrrha had just enough time to see Penny's set of identical blades rebounding back towards their wielder and Shirou conjuring another volley of his own before she took off, sprinting through the confused ranks of the White Fang.

She'd expected to have to defend herself, rushing through that many people, all of them armed and hostile, but… to either side of her sprint, Faunus fell like wheat before the scythe. None of them even came close to _thinking_ about trying to stop her, preoccupied as they were with trying — and failing — to avoid the unrelenting swarm of swords.

Near the edge of the docks, Blake was clearly tiring. The man in the white coat — Roman Torchwick, Pyrrha realized — and his black-suited associate seemed to make a dangerous pair. Torchwick was applying enough pressure to Blake that she couldn't spare any attention towards the second man, who would periodically dart into the thick of the melee with a vicious lunge of his dagger. More often than not, he would receive a blade or bullet somewhere painful for his trouble — but each time she was distracted fending him off, Roman would take advantage of the opening and land a painful looking blow with his cane.

Pyrrha drew upon her Semblance, using a trick she'd developed to help combat Ruby's speed, and _pushed_ against her own armor to help her cover ground even faster. She cut a golden blur across the battlefield, if the one-sided reaping could even be called a battle, towards her beleaguered friend.

The man in the suit dove for Blake's legs. She chopped down at the back of his neck with one of her swords, but the bright flash of a white Aura repelled her blow, and if he was bothered by the pain of the attack, he didn't show it. His own slice at her ankles was deflected by Aura in turn, but it didn't stop him from continuing his lunge and entangling himself in her legs.

Before Blake could use her Semblance to flash away, Roman swung Melodic Cudgel like a baseball bat into her stomach. With a gasping cry of pain, she tumbled to the ground, a light purple haze flickering over her body — an indication of a completely depleted Aura. The second man rolled away from her legs and stood.

Pyrrha leapt, beginning to pivot in midair, propelling herself even faster with her Semblance.

Roman lowered the barrel of his cane towards Blake's head.

Pyrrha's arm shot out, Akoúo̱ launching forward with all the force of her momentum and strength, slicing a path through the air towards Torchwick.

Just before impact, the man in black dove into the path of the spinning disc. It struck him heavily in the chest, prompting another brilliant flash of Aura and knocking him back into Roman before he fell to the ground.

Startled, the redheaded criminal turned to face Pyrrha, just in time to see her skid to a halt and catch her shield as it rebounded back to her arm. In an instant, Roman surveyed the scene before him — a pissed off Huntress, two of her friends rapidly approaching… and two dozen henchmen out cold. He casually pulled his aim away from the downed Faunus girl who was trying to crawl away and twirled his cane around his wrist.

His eyes narrowed as he recognized one of the kids interrupting his operation, even as he broke out in a wide smirk. "Well, if it isn't my old friend! How's it going, Barbecue? Where's lil' Red?"

"Not too far away, actually," Shirou called back as he drew even with his partner. Penny fell into step on Pyrrha's other side, her swords hovering menacingly behind her. "Give it up, Torchwick. You're outnumbered."

To Roman's left, Jaune took a small step forward, letting out a low, inarticulate growl. Roman put a hand on the boy's shoulder, holding him back, and then began to smile.

Slowly, deliberately, Roman began to count. "Well, let's see here. On your side, I count one… two… three…" He punctuated each number with a careless gesture of his weapon, all three of the trainee Huntsmen before him focused intently for the slightest hint of aggression.

"And on mine… One!" He gave them an elaborate bow.

"Two…" He waved with his free hand towards Jaune.

"Three, four, five!" he shouted rapidly.

The girl in the green dress was the first to realize that he was acting as a distraction. She spun around, her blades already beginning to rotate fast enough to form a solid defensive disc, just as the clatter of machine-gun fire cut through the distant roar of Bullhead engines rapidly approaching.

Shirou ducked behind Pyrrha as she followed Penny's lead and turned, shield raised, to protect them both from the hail of bullets streaming in from three of Roman's support Bullheads. He Traced his bow, taking aim towards Roman as the man simply stood and twirled his cane with a wide smile.

After weathering the first volley of gunfire, Penny's swords reconfigured themselves to face the Bullheads point-first. They continued to rapidly spin and began to coruscate with bright green light. Penny punched forwards with both hands, the light erupting forth in a vast beam, slicing straight through two of the aircraft. Their Faunus crew dove out of the wreckage, the lucky ones managing to land in the water — the rest were forced to rely on Aura to cushion their painful impact with the ground.

Shirou flushed his arrow with Prana to its Breaking point, and loosed it — and Roman Torchwick shattered like glass. As did the man in black, and, from where she'd been crawling away, Blake.

"Six!" Roman shouted, suddenly visible several meters off to the side of where Shirou had aimed, before beginning to laugh.

He was now flanked by two others — or three, technically. The man in black was still there, but on Roman's other side, Blake kneeled. Behind her, digging her heels into Blake's calves and wrenching one arm behind her painfully, stood a petite woman, dressed in an outfit of cream, brown, and light pink. Matching hair, half brown, half pink, framed a delicate face and a vicious smirk, and in her free hand, she held a long, thin blade to Blake's neck.

"Well, then! How about we all just calm down for a moment, hmm? We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, would we?" Roman asked gleefully.

The last remaining Bullhead circled around to hover behind Roman's group, just above the parked aircraft that Roman had arrived on, with the barrel of its chain-gun still pointed at the trainee Huntsmen.

Pyrrha glanced towards Shirou, ready to follow his lead, only to see the boy's bow already breaking apart into blue motes of light. She hesitantly lowered her own weapons slightly as well.

"Let her go," Shirou demanded, his tone even.

"Well, you see, kid, this is a little something I like to call insurance," Roman responded, already relaxed into a casual stance as he continued to twirl his cane. "So, instead of _you _giving _me _orders… how about I tell you how this is going to go down?"

Blake made as if to struggle slightly, but the pinch of the razor-sharp blade cutting lightly into her neck caused her to freeze once more. Roman laughed again and began to pace back and forth slowly as he outlined his own demands. "First of all, the three of us are leaving," he said with a gesture to his two companions, "and we're taking the Dust with us. Now, you've been rude enough to shoot down some of our birds, so I think it's a fair compromise if we only take two containers, don't you?"

He continued without waiting for any kind of confirmation. "Second, the kitty-cat here is coming with us until we're out of range of whatever your _friend _here just used to take out said birds. No thank you!" He laughed again.

"If you hurt her, I don't care how far away you are, you'll regret it," Shirou warned him.

Roman's smile actually dropped a bit, granting him a bit of uncharacteristic seriousness. "I get it, kid, I really do. I'm not sure _what_ the hell kind training regimen you kids are on nowadays, but I've got a very healthy awareness of just what you and your little friends are capable of. You've got my word that as soon as we feel safe, we'll dump her in the harbor. For a Huntress in training, a little swim should be nothing, right?"

To Shirou's side, Penny frowned. "According to past official records, Roman Torchwick has never broken his word after offering it," she pointed out, still sounding worried.

"See?" Roman's wide smile returned. "The girl's done her homework! That's about as good as you're gonna get, kid."

Shirou remained silent, but his shoulders relaxed slightly, the slight slump in posture marking his defeat. Roman laughed once more, before directing the airborne Bullhead over to one of the crates, a White Fang member quickly dropping from the hold to help hitch up the container to the cargo chains.

Midway into the operation, the sound of sirens became faintly audible upon the wind. Pyrrha frowned. It would still be minutes, at least, before the Vale Police Department arrived — more than enough time for Roman and his crew to escape.

Sure enough, Blake, her eyes furious, was frogmarched onto Roman's Bullhead, alongside her petite captor and the man in black. Roman himself stuck around to oversee the pickup of the cargo crate by the other vehicle, and even helped to latch the second crate to his own transport, seemingly unconcerned with his own safety. Of course, his partner being clearly visible in the second Bullhead's transport door holding a razor's blade to Blake's throat probably helped discourage anyone from striking out at him while he was distracted.

Shirou, Pyrrha and Penny watched impotently as Roman gave them one last mocking wave before taking off, flying out over the harbor with two full shipping containers of Dust — and their friend.

o-o-o-o-o

Blake stared daggers across the Bullhead's hold at Roman, who was still chuckling to himself. The man beside him — more of a boy, really, now that she could study him more closely — had pulled down his bandana and was currently dry-heaving into a bucket. The first time Blake had tried to talk, the woman sitting at her side had nicked her throat again, just deeply enough to send the message that she was to remain silent. If Blake's expression was anything to go by, she was trying to kill Roman with her mind, not that it was doing any good.

The boy looked up at her over the rim of his pail. "Sorry about all this," he said shakily. For a moment, she was surprised at the apparent sincerity in his voice. "But really, we wouldn't have had to kidnap you if you weren't a terrorist who attacked us for no reason," he continued with an apologetic shrug.

Blake growled as she realized that he was just antagonizing her. The boy's statement only made Roman laugh harder.

Luckily, she didn't have to endure their presence for long. They must have only been flying for a minute or two before Roman finally stood up and leaned out of the hold.

"Looks about far enough!" He gestured, and the small woman pulled Blake to her feet and led her to the open door. "Now, I know kitty-cats don't normally like to go swimming, but I'm afraid you'll have to deal with it!"

"You won't get-" was all Blake managed to get out before a boot struck her back, and then she was falling.

Jaune watched her splash down into the water below, and then spent a moment deep in thought before turning to Roman. "Is it just me, or have I seen one of those terrorists before on the cover of a cereal box?"

Roman started laughing again.

o-o-o-o-o

Qrow belched loudly. "Hey, man… do you think we should, uhh… investigate, or something?"

Lancer leaned back against the edge of the dinghy, lazily reeling in his rod as he watched the impromptu fireworks over at the dock. Explosions, Dust rounds, some kind of sparkly blue light — probably a Semblance — giant green lasers, and more explosions. It made for a pretty lightshow.

The Heroic Spirit, wearing his favorite casual clothes — a garish Hawaiian-style shirt and a pair of loose black slacks — chuckled lightly as he cast his line once more. "I'm sure it's all under control. Besides, what do you think you'd be able to do in this state?"

Lancer's cheeks bore a rosy glow, a testament to the sheer amount of alcohol already consumed by the legendary hero. It took a lot to get him drunk — and sure enough, the soft clink of empty bottles rolling against each other could be heard with every gentle rocking of the boat by the lapping waves. The bottle he was currently drinking from was beer, but a fair amount of the empties littering the floor were hard liquor.

"I'mma… secret super Huntsman…" Qrow slurred from the other side of the dinghy. He was fully sprawled out across one of the boat's shallow benches, his own fishing rod completely discarded, and wearing nothing but a tight black speedo with red highlights — and his tattered cape. Needless to say, after trying to keep up with the Irish demigod all night, he was significantly more intoxicated than his friend. "I can do anythin'."

Lancer laughed again. "Well, it looks like things are dying down anyways. Look, they're headed this way," he said, gesturing with his rod towards the pair of Bullheads that were rapidly approaching them, trailing large containers emblazoned with a stylized snowflake behind them.

Qrow stared up blearily at the aircraft. "Are they supposed to have those?"

"Sure, why not?" Lancer shrugged.

The gears turned slowly in Qrow's brain as he tried to process Lancer's argument, and after a moment he nodded. "Good point."

As the two Bullheads passed almost directly overhead, something fell off the side of one of them and hit the water a few dozen meters away from their little boat with a splash.

"Should we… investigate _that?" _Qrow asked again.

Lancer chuckled as he put down his rod and grabbed the boat's oars, rowing smoothly over towards where something dark was splashing around in the water. As they drew closer, it became clear that it was a woman, swimming awkwardly towards their boat.

"Hey, there! Need some help?" Lancer called out as he brought the dinghy to a stop near her.

She grabbed the side of the boat and gracefully drew herself up over the side. "Thank you-" she started to say before she got a brief glimpse of its contents. Perhaps most notable was the barely clothed man sprawled out in the bow, and the dozens of empty bottles scattering the floor that made the boat reek of alcohol — but then she saw the boat's other occupant. Something about the blue-haired man caused her hackles to shoot up, and she let out an involuntary hissing noise before trying to turn around and jump back into the water.

She didn't make it. Lightning fast, the man reached out and grabbed her by the back of her clothes, easily hoisting her back into the boat one-handed. "Hey, now, you don't seem like the strongest of swimmers," Lancer pointed out as he lowered her down to the middle seat. "I know it's a little shabby, but we can get you back to shore."

"Sorry," Blake said a bit sheepishly. "Instinct. Are you, um, a dog Faunus?"

He smiled as he noticed her damp black cat ears, showing off his own large canines. "Ah. Something like that, yeah."

"I didn' know you were a Faunus," Qrow slurred at Lancer, trying to sit up a bit straighter to examine their new passenger.

"Not quite," Lancer said with a chuckle, "just… something similar."

"I can be… a Faunus too," Qrow said with a sagely nod. "Check this out…"

For a moment, he looked as though he was intensely concentrating — and then with a soft pop, his head disappeared and was replaced by the head of a human-sized blackbird, which immediately let out a loud "_Caw_!"

Blake shot about three feet into the air with another hiss before trying to dive overboard again, but she was caught and returned to her seat just like before.

"Ignore him," Lancer laughed, unbuttoning his shirt as he watched the other man feeling his transformed head with his hands and squawking in distress. He passed her the garment before taking up his oars again and beginning to row. "Here, before you catch a cold. We'll have you to shore in no time."

"Th-thank you. I appreciate the help," Blake said, still staring nervously at the other man. She wrapped herself in the large shirt like a blanket.

"So, how'd you end up falling from the sky?" Lancer asked casually.

She looked at him, face guarded. "Long story."

He smiled back. "Nothing but time," he pointed out with a jerk of his head towards the faraway shore. "I'm Lancer, that's Qrow. Want a drink?" At that, he angled his head towards the large cooler at her side. Behind her, Qrow finally managed to return his head to normal, muttering something mostly unintelligible about stupid wizards. "I'd offer something to eat as well, but all we have is raw fish," Lancer continued.

Blake's eyes lit up.

o-o-o-o-o

"Do you think she'll be ok?" Ruby asked as she stared out over the ocean. Her face was etched with worry.

She and Weiss had arrived only moments too late to help, Roman and his retinue already well on their way.

"It looks like they dropped her off near a boat," Shirou said, squinting off into the distance as well. "Roman knows that if he did anything to hurt her, we'd destroy him."

"Really? You can see that far?" Pyrrha asked. She couldn't even make out the boat in question, let alone the point at which Blake had apparently been dropped.

Penny's bright green eyes seemed to almost spin as they dilated slightly. "I can see her as well," she reported. "She appears unharmed."

Ruby sighed in relief. "I hope so…"

Weiss frowned. "Well, there's nothing we can do to speed things up, so we might as well deal with… _these," _said with contempt, gesturing to the small army of White Fang troopers.

Shirou nodded his agreement, and the five of them began the process of restraining their prisoners, although for the most part that meant dragging them over to him so he could Project pairs of manacles.

Before long, the police arrived, Yang and Nora only moments behind them. Pyrrha moved to fill them in while Shirou dealt with the police, and a short while later the seven of them had little left to do but wait impotently at the edge of the docks as the small boat slowly and steadily grew closer.

"You're sure she's fine?" Yang asked again, for the third time in as many minutes.

Shirou nodded again. "As sure as I can be. There are two guys with her, both shirtless. Looks like she's wearing one of theirs."

Yang growled, still angry that she hadn't been close enough to make a difference in the fight. "They'd better not try anything funny with her, or else…"

At her side, Nora giggled and waved her hammer. "If they do, I'll hold 'em down for you while you break their legs!" she reassured her teammate.

Ruby was the third to be able to make out the details, and she let out a gasp of happy surprise. "Oh my gosh, that's my uncle Qrow! Yang, look!"

Yang squinted, and then groaned. "That… might be even worse than it being random guys…"

Before long, the dinghy was nearly pulling even with the docks.

"Blake! Uncle Qrow!" Ruby yelled, waving exuberantly. Blake, wrapped in a hideous lime green and orange shirt, seemed to shrink a bit in her seat, but the dark-haired man wobblily stood, nearly falling overboard, revealing that he was pants-less as well as shirtless.

He scanned the small crowd at the docks slowly, and then broke out into a dopey grin. He snapped and made finger guns towards them. "Ladiesh," he slurred before leaning backwards against thin air and toppling over into the water.

Ruby groaned and put her hand over her face as Nora began to laugh. "Oh, no… it's Drunkle Qrow… _again..._"

"I didn't know he had any friends," Yang pointed out as she sized up the leanly muscled back of the man rowing towards them.

With a final stroke of one oar, Lancer spun the boat, bringing it to rest against the dock. "Hey, I think I found something that belongs to you all," he said with a chuckle as he turned to face them. He grinned and winked. "Ladies."

"Lancer?" Shirou said incredulously.

"Oh, hey!" Lancer paused for a moment, clearly racking his brain. "... kid!"

Shirou sighed. "Lancer, I had you over for dinner at my house. It's Shirou, remember?"

"You know this man?" Pyrrha asked warily.

"Yeah, he's the guy I told you about that stabbed me through the heart," he said offhandedly.

"He did _what?!" _Yang yelled.

Blake's Faunus ears twitched as she slowly climbed onto the dock. "...Figuratively?" she asked, appraising both Shirou and Lancer in a new light.

Yang rushed forward and embraced her teammate as Ruby gasped again. "Ohmygosh you have little kitty ears and theyaresocute!" she squealed from behind the pair.

"Literally," Shirou corrected Blake.

"I'm sorry," Blake said softly.

"You got _stabbed _in the _heart _and _lived? _That's so cool!" Nora yelled.

"I'm glad you're ok," Yang said as she squeezed her friend. "Even though I am _so_ mad at you right now."

"In my defense…" Lancer started, and then trailed off. He lifted the cooler off the boat and then climbed ashore himself. "Actually, yeah, my bad."

With a sudden spray of water, Qrow pulled himself onto the dock as well, where he stood dripping. "Whad I miss?"

"Hi Uncle Qrow! Blake is our friend from Beacon and some of us were just fighting terrorists and Shirou got stabbed by your friend one time!" Ruby supplied helpfully at high speed. Weiss sighed.

Suddenly Yang gasped, pulling away from her partner and staring down at her hands. "Blake, you're bleeding!"

Blake's eyes widened and she looked down as well. "Oh – I'm so sorry! The blood is from the fish!"

Yang looked confused, but Lancer popped open the lid of the cooler to reveal several freshly filleted fish.

"Sashimi?" Shirou appraised them appreciatively.

"Your uncle's Semblance is _really _weird," Blake said to Ruby and Yang.

"Yeah," Yang answered with a small chuckle. "It can be pretty strange to be that unlucky for a while, especially at first."

Blake frowned. "What? I meant the whole bird thing."

"What bird thing?" Ruby asked her.

Weiss stomped her foot on the ground. "Everybody stop! There are far too many things going on at once! Let's all just calm down and we can talk things through one at a time!"

"Good idea, little lady," Lancer replied. "Hey, I work at a nice little restaurant, and I've got to store this fish in the freezer there anyways. We'll have the place to ourselves if you all want to catch up and warm up for a bit."

"It's a little late…" Pyrrha pointed out.

"Stop by any time, then," Lancer suggested with an easy grin. "Your uncle can send you the address later, right?"

Qrow nodded along. "Nice seeing you, girls," he said with a bob of his head towards Ruby and Yang. "Ladies," he directed to the rest of them with what appeared to be an attempt at a wink which accidentally used both eyes. "Looking forward to hearing all about Beacon, and this… _boy,_" he said with a protective squint towards Shirou. "Now, let's keep this party going!"

Qrow slapped Lancer on the back, and then took a single step past him. The plank he stepped on snapped, creating a hole large enough for Qrow to plummet through back into the water. The other end of the plank somehow shot upwards with the speed of a bullet, slamming into Lancer's face and knocking him over backwards. The back of his head impacted a metal mooring cleat – _without_ the tell-tale flash of Aura – before he too rolled bonelessly over the edge and into the water.

Ruby shrieked. "Qrow, you killed your friend!" she shouted into the hole in dismay.

"_That_ bad luck thing," Yang said to Blake.

A few moments later, Lancer pulled himself back out with a groan, effortlessly pulling Qrow behind him by the scruff of his cape with one hand. "Tougher than I look, little girl," he said with a wry grin. Qrow was cackling madly.

Blake wordlessly passed the bright shirt back to its owner, who accepted it with a nod of thanks and began to dry himself off.

"Penny?" Shirou called out. Everyone else turned to see that she'd silently slipped away from the group, and was climbing into the back of a black car.

"Sorry, friends!" Penny called back. She hesitated for a short moment before shutting the door, and the car sped off immediately.

"Must have been past her curfew or something?" Ruby wondered aloud.

"Frankly, for a school night, we should be getting back to Beacon too," Weiss said.

Shirou nodded. "We have a lot to talk about."

o-o-o-o-o

**Sorry for the long wait! It took forever for me to get this chapter looking how I wanted it, and even now I'm not completely happy with it, but in the end, I decided it would be better to post it and move on. **

**I also unfortunately have to say that another hiatus is incoming – a few weeks from now, I won't have access to a computer again for almost two months. If I don't manage to get out another chapter before then, then that's why I won't be posting chapters or responding to messages! Thanks to everyone who's sticking with me anyways, and I hope you all continue to enjoy the story! As always, I appreciate all reviews and messages!**


	16. Chapter 16

"I can't _believe _you! We're supposed to be a team! I'm supposed to be your _partner!" _Yang shouted, pacing angrily.

Blake shrunk even further into herself from where she was sitting on her bed, pressed into the corner of the room and hugging her knees to her chest. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"You could have _died _out there, Blake! There's a reason Beacon puts students into teams — newsflash, you're not a pro-Huntress yet!" Yang continued cutting into her partner.

"I know," Blake muttered, staring at the floor.

"I think—" Ren tried to interject from where he was awkwardly watching the one-sided argument with Nora, but Yang cut him off.

"Did you really think you could take on that many people by yourself? You're _beyond_ lucky that Pyrrha got to you in time!"

"I'm aware of that," Blake nodded slightly, still avoiding eye contact.

"You two–" Nora didn't fare any better than Ren.

"And the only reason they got away was because they had _you_ to use as a bargaining chip!" Yang went on, oblivious to the rest of her team.

Nora sighed and extended a clenched fist, held within her other palm, towards Ren. He rolled his eyes, but mirrored the gesture. Once, twice, thrice they bounced their hands, and then at the unspoken signal, Ren suddenly extended all of his fingers. Nora's hand remained clenched.

"Aww, dang it. I never get to try things my way," Nora pouted. She flexed her fist, joints cracking loudly.

"You always pick rock, Nora," Ren pointed out as he stepped forward to defuse the situation. "Violence isn't always the answer," he added for good measure.

"Can't argue if they're unconscious," Nora grumbled halfheartedly.

Ren knelt, and pressed his hand to the ground. With a ripple of pink Aura, he pulled upon his Semblance. Yang and Blake seemed to fade, the colors of their clothing suddenly dulling. Yang was cut off mid-tirade.

"Of all the stupid—" Yang paused for a moment as her brilliant hair suddenly lost its luster, and then she took a deep breath before continuing at a far more reasonable volume. "Blake, I'm upset because of how worried I was about you. If you'd been hurt, or worse, I would have been devastated. I thought you were avoiding me for the last week because of something I did, that you hated me — and it really hurts that you didn't trust me enough to even ask for help."

Blake's eyes shot up, making contact with Yang's for the first time since the shouting had begun. "I don't hate you, Yang, and I do trust you," she said, her tone not _quite_ managing to convey annoyance. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to get hurt either. I didn't want to drag you into my problems."

"Did you ever consider that you might hurt us _by _not telling us?" Yang asked. What could have come across as an accusation was said so calmly that it only seemed sincere.

Blake slowly shook her head. "I'm… not used to people caring about me that way. I've been through some stuff in the past, and I guess I have some insecurities. I'm used to just being able to fade out of people's lives. I'm sorry, Yang. All of you."

Ren dropped his Semblance, and the girls burst back into color. A tear began to slide down Blake's cheek, and Yang spun angrily towards Ren.

"_That—_!" She started to shout, before she paused and took a deep breath, relaxing slightly. "...was probably for the best. Thanks."

He nodded to her with a small smile. "You both clearly wanted to express how you felt, but your emotions were getting in the way of effective communication."

Yang nodded an acknowledgment and turned back to Blake. "Sorry for getting carried away," she said, a little sheepishly. "It's just… I care about you a lot, you know? I was scared sick."

"We all do, and we all were," Nora added for good measure. "Team RESN too."

Blake sniffled. "And… you don't care that I'm…" She pointed up at her ears — her _other_ pair — which were free of their usual bow.

Yang snorted. "Of course not, silly. Who do you think we are?"

Blake hesitantly uncurled herself from her ball and made her way to the edge of her bed. The instant her feet touched the ground, Yang engulfed her in a hug.

"Thank you," Blake mumbled into Yang's shoulder as tears continued to silently flow down her face. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I promise it won't happen again."

The two girls stumbled as Nora suddenly shoved Ren into them, before rushing forwards and wrapping her arms around all three. "Group hug!" she declared happily as she lifted all three of her teammates into the air effortlessly. "Next time we all get to beat up terrorists _together!"_

o-o-o-o-o

"Penny, the footage you submitted during your debrief of the incident has been fully reviewed. Both your father and myself find it… interesting."

"I thought so too, General!" Penny replied.

"First of all, you performed excellently. Your combat parameters seem to match or exceed all of our original simulations. Well done."

"Thank you, Uncle Ironwood!" She beamed. She could practically feel his proud smile through the screen.

"What we found most… intriguing, however, was the boy."

"My friend, Shirou?" Penny confirmed with a questioning nod, her head slightly tilted.

"Yes. He exhibits a number of very interesting characteristics. From the footage and your written report, I would just like to confirm the following with you one more time. He, or more specifically his right arm, emitted a neon glow — teal or aqua in color, for the record — when engaged in combat. He utilized a collection of multiple swords in said combat, which were manipulated without apparent physical contact and struck with near-perfect precision. They were seen to appear, disappear, and reappear — the phenomenon captured at least twice in your footage — in flashes of teal light. Your report also noted that on several occasions, he displayed eyesight far above the human norm, and that you detected no Faunus features."

Penny nodded. "Yes, General. That is all correct."

"Thank you, Penny. Now, your father and I were interested, and somewhat concerned, about the fact that many of the characteristics I just described bear a striking similarity to a number of your _own _characteristics. We were wondering if you had any further insights as to these similarities."

Penny nodded happily. "As a matter of fact, I do! During a prior conversation between Shirou and myself regarding our similarities, I pointed out that we share the same shade of hair color!"

There was a slight pause. "A prior conversation about your similarities? Tell me more."

"Shirou initiated the conversation," she reported, "by responding to a query his partner made about why he wished to be my friend. He said that he felt we were quite similar for some reason, and that I reminded him of himself. I responded, as I said, by remarking on our shared hair color."

"And then?"

"He said that he views me as something similar to a long-lost sister."

Another moment of silence.

"Thank you, Penny. You've certainly given us a lot to think about."

"Of course, General." Penny smiled.

"I'll be in touch regarding further assignments."

Her eyes widened in excitement. "You mean in addition to testing myself and winning the Vytal tournament?"

"Indeed. It is good that you have established a rapport with him and his team. We may require you to investigate this Shirou further."

o-o-o-o-o

Roman took a puff of his cigar.

Gods knew he needed it, after all that shit.

Neo was… around, somewhere. He was never really sure. He had sent Jaune home before delivering the crates to their final destination, a nominally abandoned warehouse. Wouldn't do for the kid to be disillusioned.

Also wouldn't do for certain _other_ people to find out about the kid.

"Roman. I can't say I'm entirely pleased." A silky smooth voice sliced through the silence of the warehouse.

Roman sighed, using the inhale to savor another mouthful of smoke. Think of the devil, and she shall appear…

He spun around, donning the friendly mask he always used when dealing with his 'employer,' no matter his actual feelings on the matter.

"Cinder! Always a pleasure to see you drop in completely unannounced," he lied easily. "And you brought the kids… lovely."

"I can't help but notice that after your little stunt tonight, our fleet is down two airships," the woman noted, an undercurrent of annoyance simmering beneath her sultry tone. Behind her stood her two lackeys, arms crossed. He knew they were good, sure… but he also knew who the _real _danger was.

"You might _also _notice that we're _up _two containers packed full of Dust," he pointed out with a scowl. "In fact, thanks to the market shortage that _I _am responsible for, you could easily procure a couple extra Bullheads by only selling one of the containers I procured."

"I suppose it could be worse," she admitted, and Roman felt himself release a lot of tension that he hadn't even realized he was holding. "Still, Roman, I'm a little disappointed in you. I'm afraid you have a lot of explaining to do."

His scowl deepened. "It's hardly my fault those stupid mutts are incompetent."

"No, I suppose it isn't." She wore a casual smile, but her eyes flashed dangerously. "However, if we're calling _competence_ into question… I expected _you _to be able to handle such a simple job."

"I was handling it!" he protested. "It stopped being simple when that Huntress showed up. She might still be a student, but she didn't fight like one. She implied she was ex-Fang."

"Interesting." Her eyes narrowed. "Our friends will have to explain that later. Still, nothing above your capabilities."

"Of course not," he said with a scoff. "I _had _her. And then her three friends showed up, and blew through two-dozen 'trained' White Fang soldiers like Beowolves through a kindergarten."

Her smirk grew a fraction, but he knew better than to mistake it for her being pleased. Casually, she lifted a hand, a ball of fire flickering into existence from nothing – no Dust. It illuminated her face from below, giving her sculpted features a sinister twist.

"Ah, yes. _Them. _Tell me more," she demanded.

Roman gulped.

o-o-o-o-o

"I was off duty," Qrow protested, a little sheepishly.

"Qrow, you're a Huntsman," Ozpin retorted. "You're _always _on duty. Your niece is _fifteen, _and she hadn't even been accepted into Beacon yet when she managed to foil a Dust robbery."

Qrow sighed. "Look, the whole thing was over too fast for me to do anything about it anyway, even if I had noticed. Besides, I snagged that girl out of the water, that's gotta count for something, right?"

"You _didn't notice_ two Bullheads exploding?"

Qrow ran his fingers through his slicked-back hair with a sigh. "Look, Oz, I was out fishing, just having a good time with a friend. I was distracted, so sue me. Everyone got out alright in the end. It's not the end of the world."

Ozpin's eyes narrowed over his mug. "You don't have friends," he accused suspiciously.

"Screw you! What about Tai?"

Ozpin shook his head. "If it was him, you would have referred to him by name, not to mention that I'd have a report from him by now as well."

Qrow deflated a bit. "Fair enough. But yeah, I made a new friend, is that so hard to believe?"

Ozpin simply stared at him, one eyebrow slightly raised.

"Shut up!"

"I didn't say anything," the headmaster pointed out calmly.

Qrow grumbled.

"Well, let's hear it then. Who is this new friend of yours?"

Qrow shrugged. "Just a guy I met. Goes by the name Lancer."

"Like the Grimm?"

"Don't think so," Qrow said with a shake of his head. "I think it's because of his big red spear that he showed me."

Ozpin suppressed a smirk. "And?"

"Well, picture me, right? He's a lot like that, except better at fighting, and with a better alcohol tolerance."

That garnered a reaction. Ozpin actually put down his mug. "Impossible."

Qrow preened. "Yeah, I know, I'm a badass, but it's true."

"No, not _that_. I have literally never met a human who can drink more than you."

Qrow chuckled. "Then you haven't met Lancer."

"He's a Huntsman as well, then?" He began to type a quick search into his Scroll, but Qrow cut him off with a wave.

"No use looking him up, I've already tried. He's not registered as one, at least. It's possible he's changed his name, but my gut says that's not the case. I get the feeling that he's not from around here — just a _bit _too unaware of what exactly Huntsmen were, before I explained. He mentioned he was trained one-on-one on some island by a woman, but that's about it."

Curious. "I'd like to meet him."

Qrow snorted. "Thought you might. Already kind of organized everyone for a debrief at the bar Lancer works at. He'll be there, obviously."

"The students as well?" Ozpin mused. "Perfect. When?"

"As soon as I send out the address," Qrow said with a casual wave of his Scroll. He fell silent for a moment, his left hand flicking unconsciously for his flask before he managed to control the nervous tic. "Oz… Ruby's only fifteen."Ozpin allowed his features to settle into a small scowl. "You know as well as I do what this string

of robberies means, Qrow."

"I know." Qrow sighed. "I know. Not quite enough Dust stolen to destabilize the economy, and too much for one group to pawn off on the black market without being noticed."

"She's making a move, Qrow. Even if it's only through pawns…"

"It still needs to be addressed. I _know, _Oz. But… she's _fifteen._"

Ozpin affixed his former student with a bemused glare. "She also happens to be a part of one of the most skilled teams I've ever seen pass through Beacon's halls," he noted wryly.

Qrow chuckled darkly. "Flattery will get you nowhere, Oz. Not this time. I trained her myself. She's good, but she's good for a _fifteen-year-old. _She's not _ready _for this."

One corner of Ozpin's mouth twitched upward, and he began to tap at his Scroll once more. "Oh, Qrow. Has it been so long since you were a student that you've forgotten what Beacon is capable of?"

The dark-haired man snorted. "She's been here for, what, a couple of months? Sure. You took two bandit kids, and turned us into some of the best damn warriors on Remnant. But that kind of training takes years."

Ozpin's smile grew, and he expanded his Scroll before spinning it around on the desk to face Qrow. He gestured invitingly.

Qrow rolled his eyes, but leaned forward to pick it up. "What's this, then?"

"Well, Ms. Rose and her teammates were occupied, last night, with some rather serious matters – as you know. Unfortunately, that left them unable to attend a training session they had scheduled with another team — one that they rescheduled for tonight."

Qrow's eyes widened as he watched the camera feed.

o-o-o-o-o

Ruby glanced towards Shirou, flashing a slight smile. No surprises there — he made a beeline straight for Velvet as soon as the match started, as he often did.

Off to her left, Pyrrha advanced steadily through a sudden stream of bullets, both hands up to support her shield against the onslaught. A wave of magnetic interference flickered out before her, subtly influencing the trajectory of the bullets headed her way — drawing them towards the exact center of her shield. She could have directed them away from herself, at the risk of sending them towards her allies, but while they packed a hefty punch, Akoúo̱was up to the task.

Behind the cover provided by Pyrrha, Weiss followed. She waved Myrtenaster like a conductor's baton, already starting to shape the arena to her will. Walls of ice sprung from the ground, restricting Coco's movements, even as bolts of multicolored light carrying more esoteric effects burst forth to suppress her. Weiss' eyes moved constantly around the battlefield, assessing the situation, but Ruby knew that the support she'd be getting would be minimal until her teammates managed to take out Coco.

The plan was fairly simple. Coco's minigun, Gianduja, was too great of a force multiplier to be left alone. Pyrrha, arguably their strongest fighter, would move to take her out with Weiss' support — and even then, it wouldn't be easy. The second-year girl was wickedly skilled.

Shirou and his strange abilities were a perfect match for Velvet's Anesidora, and they were confident that he could lock down the versatility and support that she provided her team for as long as necessary. They would lose the same type of versatility while Shirou was distracted, but Weiss was just as useful as a support combatant.

All Ruby had to do was face down the remaining two members of team CFVY until Coco was dealt with.

With a spin and a flourish, Weiss slashed downwards, a burst of fire erupting from her blade and tracing a line across the entire arena, neatly blocking Yatsuhashi's path as he moved to shatter some of the icy barriers surrounding Coco, and causing him to stumble backwards in surprise.

Ruby fired. The large man managed to recover in time to block the shot with the layered sode protecting his shoulder, but let out a quiet grunt as the bullet burst into a chunk of ice at the point of impact. It would buy her a little time.

It paid to have the heiress to the world's largest Dust company on her team.

No pressure. Just Ruby Rose, fifteen-year-old first year, facing off against two eighteen-year old second years from one of the best teams at Beacon.

Crescent Rose shifted into its familiar scythe form — Fox was almost upon her.

No time for doubt or indecision. Her team was counting on her — they _believed _in her. Her smile grew.

She had this.

Her weapon blurred into motion, spinning and slashing in a whirlwind of parries, sparking against the blood-red blades of Sharp Retribution as she dashed backwards to keep her distance.

It had taken her a while to get used to Fox's style. At first glance, he was a lot like Ren — both were expert martial artists, using a pair of twinned blades that were no more deadly than the rest of their bodies. She leaned back, dodging under a high kick, and fired at the floor beneath her to turn the movement into a backflip even as the recoil brought the tip of her scythe's blade up towards Fox's chin.

He jerked back as well, before spinning around to drive a bladed elbow at her as she landed. That was the main difference between him and Ren — Ren was graceful, flowing like water around attacks and lashing out with limbs like whips in their fluidity. Quick and unpredictable.

Fox was all knees and elbows, relentless and brutal. She'd taken more than a few hits from him before, and she could say without a doubt that he was stronger than Ren. In fact, due to his relative experience, he would probably beat Ren in a fight, especially since her fellow team leader didn't have the best stamina or durability for an all out brawl.

She ducked under the strike easily, driving the butt of her scythe into his stomach as she did. Fox barely flinched, and she had to backpedal again as Crescent Rose spun to deflect the flurry of counterattacks. None of them landed.

She was _used _to unrelenting and brutal. They had their differences, sure, but it wasn't all that different from Yang's style, at least in mindset.

She blocked an incoming knee with the haft of her scythe, the head of the blade next to Fox's head, and fired again. The sharp retort of the high-caliber bullet just next to his ear caused him to wince, disorienting him enough that the recoil-boosted blade slammed down against the back of his shoulder uncontested.

Ruby whirled out of the way as he stumbled forward past her. The blind boy had incredibly sensitive hearing, to the point that his lack of sight wasn't an issue, but that just left him vulnerable in other ways.

She ran forward to meet Yatsuhashi as he rushed to help his teammate. The ice hadn't held him for long, but she hadn't expected it to.

Fox was strong, but Yatsuhashi was _strong. _His greatsword, Fulcrum, was little more than a sharpened slab of metal. It's point of balance was halfway up the blade, and yet he still managed to swing it around easily with one hand if needed. She'd been hit by it _once_, and that was more than enough of a lesson that she shouldn't let it happen again.

Easier said than done, of course. His size, and that of his weapon, belied his speed — but Nora was faster. And Ruby was even faster than Nora.

She dropped to her knees at the end of her run, sliding forward under a horizontal swing that could have cleaved an Ursa Major in half. A backwards shot towards Fox helped drive her scythe into his leg, but the man's stance was rock solid, and he barely budged despite the drain on his Aura.

She shifted Crescent Rose back into its rifle form to untangle herself and used what was left of her momentum to roll forward, barely getting out of the way as he brought his greatsword down in a strike that shattered the floor of the arena. She came to her feet facing him and fired as rapidly as she could, a few bullets managing to land before he was able to angle his sword up to deflect them. Predictably, he looked as though he barely felt them.

Yatsuhashi was tough as nails. There wasn't much she could do to hurt him, and the invincible bulwark he provided was an incredible asset when he had someone like Coco to unleash overwhelming firepower behind him. Team RESN had learned the hard way that it was best to separate those two early.

He had one glaring weakness, though.

Compared to her, he was slow.

She went on the offensive. After spending so much time sparring with her teammates and team RVBY, anticipating his oversized sword was easy.

One strike landed, then another. His defense was good, but as she blurred faster and faster, drawing on her Semblance, they started to connect more rapidly. Slowly but surely, she was chipping away at his Aura.

Unfortunately, he had a lot of it. Fox was approaching again.

She'd seen enough of CFVY's fights to know that Fox was incredible at coordinating attacks with the rest of his team. Weiss suspected it was Semblance related, but whatever the case, he was most dangerous with a partner.

A second later, Yatsuhashi wound up for an incredible diagonal swing, from the ground up. She'd have to jump it, but she could already see Fox sprinting up behind, ready to meet her in the air.

She had to be _faster._

She drew deeper from her Semblance, and time almost seemed to slow down as it filled her entire body — and then she _flowed._

It was a strange sensation. Rushing forward in a stream of rose petals, she could _feel_ Yatsuhashi's sword, sense the way it split the air as it swung towards her and… through her.

It swung cleanly through her… body? Did she even have a body? Had she ever? It didn't hurt, as she split in two and rode the air currents to either side of Fulcrum, or as her two halves reformed and then coalesced back into her body in a sudden surge of consciousness, tinged heavily with relief.

She was still getting used to the fact that her Semblance went beyond simple speed, and it didn't always work the way she wanted it to. More than once, her concentration had slipped and she'd darted straight into an attack instead of flowing around it.

She shot Yatsuhashi in the back, the recoil only adding to her speed as she blurred past Fox just after he leapt for a flying kick. Her blade hooked around his chest and pulled her into a spin to bleed off her excess speed — carving away Fox's Aura at the same time.

She flung him towards Yatsuhashi, dropping to the ground and firing towards the two of them once more, and was rewarded by a crimson burst of color as Fox's Aura finally gave way.

She paused for a moment as Yatsuhashi dropped his sword and caught his teammate before gently lowering him to his feet.

Fox turned to her and nodded with a small smile before limping towards the edge of the arena. Yatsuhashi slid his foot under Fulcrum and deftly kicked it up into his hands before turning to face Ruby and nodding as well.

She burst forward once more, petals streaming in her wake.

Try as he might, Yatsuhashi couldn't hit her as she dashed around like a bladed whirlwind, somehow always seeming to be behind him. Even if he could withstand the heavy blows of her scythe, each of which could have felled a lesser man, they slowly whittled away his defenses.

It was only a matter of time. Ruby wasn't sure exactly how long it took, as now that there were no other distractions, she fell into a trance of dodging and attacking. Eventually, however, Yatsuhashi sank to one knee and held up a hand. Her eyes flicked up to the screens above, and saw his Aura was firmly in the red.

For a moment, she was confused. She'd only been supposed to distract the two of them until her team could help her out, not just _beat _them. But…

"_Yeeeeesssss!" _she exulted, throwing both hands into the air and jumping in place. "I am the _best!_ Whoo! Weiss! Shirou! Did you _see _that? Pyrrha?"

"Shut up and _help–" _Weiss' voice came from behind the barrier of flame that still divided the battlefield, halted abruptly by a metallic _thump _and a squawk of pain that Ruby thought sounded suspiciously like a designer handbag with approximately the same weight as a minigun smacking her partner. Just a guess, of course.

"On my way!" she called back, chambering another round into Crescent Rose and flying up past the flames in another burst of petals.

o-o-o-o-o

Qrow didn't say anything.

"Quite," Ozpin agreed with a nod.

His agent was silent for a moment more before responding. "Beacon, huh?"

"To tell you the truth, I was as surprised as you are."

"You didn't do this?" Qrow asked with a raised eyebrow, clearly puzzled.

"I can take no credit. It was Ruby's own drive and the positive influence of her team that led to what you just saw."

"This is live footage," Qrow noted, a hint of a question in his tone.

"Yes," Ozpin acknowledged. "I had no way of knowing how good of a showing she would provide. Does it not count for something, that I was confident she would impress?"

Qrow tried to laugh, but it quickly turned into a sigh. "Yeah," he said simply.

"Qrow, your niece… she is exemplary."

"Always has been," he muttered.

"And her team is no less so," Ozpin added.

"Arena champ and Dust princess, right?"

"If you were only watching Ruby, I can see how you might come to that conclusion," Ozpin said. "But I can promise you that her fourth teammate is, perhaps, more extraordinary than even the others."

Qrow snorted. "I need a drink."

Ozpin leveled a slightly disapproving glare at him.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it, after the meeting. But…" he trailed off.

"She _is _ready."

"Is anyone, really?" he countered half-heartedly.

He looked up, meeting Ozpin's gaze, as the rhetorical response garnered far more of a pause than he'd been expecting.

"No," was Oz's definitive answer. "But that does not affect what we must do."

"...Yeah."

Qrow understood. He really did. There was a lot at stake here, and like it or not, Ruby's performance set her apart.

Maybe he shouldn't have trained her as well as he did.

"I'll send them the address," he said in the tone of a man who was already defeated.

"I'm sorry, old friend," Ozpin said.

That was the damnedest thing about Oz.

He was sincere.

"Yeah. Me too."

If she was good _enough… _maybe he should have trained her even harder.

"You're about to kick things off, aren't you?" Qrow asked.

Ozpin smiled sadly. "I'm afraid I don't have much choice in the matter. She's already made her move."

"I wish it didn't have to be them," he said.

"You saw it for yourself. She's…"

"Yeah. Like a young Summer."

"They're ready."

"...Yeah."

o-o-o-o-o

**Hey! My apologies for a longer break than I was anticipating. I spent a couple months completely away from any way to write, and it was more disruptive to my writing flow than I thought. I can't guarantee that there won't be similarly long breaks in the future, but that's just the way life goes – still, I promise I'll always be back eventually!**

**Anyways, I've had a lot of messages and reviews asking me about how exactly I'm handling the mechanics of the two worlds involved in my crossover. In order to answer some of those questions, I present a special, explicitly non-canon omake: Rin's Q&A Corner! **

**Let's just be clear, nobody **_**has **_**to read this, of course. But, if you find yourself interested in just how the world I've imagined works, and **_**will **_**work, or if you just want a bit more content, please read on!**

o-o-o-o-o

"Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us today!" the girl with black hair, worn in a pair of long twin-tails, exclaimed cheerfully.

She was sitting behind a fancy desk decorated with gears, which was rather incongruously placed in the middle of what appeared to be a dojo.

"I'm your host, the brilliant Tohsaka Rin! And please welcome our guest, the esteemed headmaster of Beacon Academy – Professor Ozpin!"

She gestured to the tall, silver-haired man sitting next to her and paused for a round of non-existent applause.

"Thank you for having me," Ozpin said, taking a sip from a steaming mug of cocoa. "This is… certainly an interesting setting for an interview," he noted.

"It's tradition to host non-canon meta conversations here," Rin said with a shrug. "The most this place gets used is whenever somebody dies, so people can tell them how to do better next time. Illya's distracting Taiga for the moment, so we should have the place to ourselves. "

"I see," Ozpin said wisely, clearly not seeing at all. "At the very least, I certainly seem to be getting a fair amount of screentime, this chapter."

"Now, I'm sure you all must be wondering what this is all about," Rin said to her imaginary audience. "Frankly, I put this together because our adorable protagonist, Shirou, is an idiot," she explained.

Ozpin raised an eyebrow mysteriously. "He's doing well enough in his classes," he pointed out.

Rin scoffed. "Nobody cares about _that_. He's an idiot about magecraft. He never asks the right questions!"

"He _did_ ask me if I blew up the moon."

"Believe it or not, that was one of his more insightful ones," Rin said with a sigh. "Anyways, today we're here to actually answer some of the questions that I'm sure you all have about how our two very different worlds interact on a metaphysical level! Since Shirou probably isn't smart enough to ever ask about any of this in the actual story, I've brought Ozpin on today to help us clear some things up."

"I'm not usually in the habit of admitting my secrets," Ozpin admitted.

"Yeah, but it's not like this is _real_, right?" Rin asked.

Ozpin frowned.

"Besides, I'm not going to ask you anything about your secret _plots _or anything. Today I'm going to ask the questions that _I_ would have asked if I was the protagonist, instead of the dense one."

"I suppose that's alright," Ozpin agreed.

"Our main topics of conversation today are going to be Magecraft, Aura, and whether or not you're actually a Wizard," Rin said happily. "Let's start with the last one first, because I think it will give us a pretty good foundation for the rest. So, Professor Ozpin: are you a Wizard? Or just a Magus?"

Ozpin steepled his fingers. "Well, first of all, I'm not sure that I should really be aware of all the different terminology of your universe. Since this is non-canon, should we just assume that I am?"

"Of course," Rin laughed. "This would take forever if we had to explain every little thing to each other. You can also assume that we're all familiar with the general history of Remnant, and the fact that you can reincarnate."

"Very well. I started, obviously, as a Magus. Back in my original time, Magecraft was common, known the world over and used by all. In fact, I believe you would have called it an Age of Gods. I was particularly skilled with it, of course, but it was not for many, many lives that I finally became a Wizard."

"Very interesting," Rin said as she nodded along. "So, which Magic do you wield?"

"I should think that would be obvious to a self-proclaimed genius like you," Ozpin teased.

Rin huffed, but her smile widened a moment later. "Of course. Every time you reincarnate, your soul is transferred to a new body. Being able to witness the Third Magic, Heaven's Feel, every time you die must have given your research into it a huge advantage. The Einzberns would be jealous."

"Very good," Ozpin acknowledged with a knowing smile. "That's correct. The magic that I perfected was the materialization of the soul – although, my own use of it seems to be quite different from that of the Einzberns." He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts. "You're familiar, obviously, with Mystic Codes?"

Rin nodded, before smiling out at the audience. "Obviously. But for those who aren't, a Mystic Code is a specialized tool for Magecraft. Put prana in, and get Magecraft out – the same Mystery every time for a given Mystic Code. They're typically more prana efficient than casting the same spell using Magecraft normally."

"Exactly. Using the Third Magic, I discovered a way to create Mystic Codes that are autonomous, self-defensive, and self-repairing. They generate prana naturally, and most importantly, they're self-replicating. Also, each new Mystic Code has a semi-random, semi-unique spell built in, typically with a strong application for combat."

Rin's eyes widened. "Impressive. Not just impressive, impossible. Unless…"

Something clicked. "Ah. You're talking about _people._"

Ozpin nodded. "That's right. Aura is the physical manifestation of the soul – I was the first person to awaken another's Aura, turning them into what is, in effect, an extremely powerful Mystic Code."

"So, a person's Semblance is the spell engraved on the Mystic Code made of their soul…"

Ozpin nodded once more before taking another sip of cocoa. "When the gods removed magic from the world, it would be more accurate to say that they removed magic from humanity. Humans are no longer born with Magic Circuits – the discovery of Aura was the best tool that I could find to help humanity fight back against the Grimm. Especially considering that Gaia no longer permeates the world with Mana – the gods were able to seal all that magical energy into Dust – so even if we did still have Magecraft, we would be limited to fueling our spells with Od. My ascension from Magus to Wizard is entirely secondary to the benefit that humanity as a whole has received as a result."

"And because Mystic Codes are so much more energy efficient than normal Magecraft, you get more out of having people using their Od to fuel their Auras," Rin extrapolated. "More power, anyways, at the cost of versatility. And Shirou hasn't really thought about it because he always uses his Od instead of Mana anyways."

"Quite so."

"So," Rin said as she shuffled a small stack of notes, "can anybody be turned into one of these Mystic Codes? Or are there limitations?"

"Unfortunately for Shirou, as he correctly assumed, having active Magic Circuits would preclude the ability to unlock an Aura," Ozpin confirmed. "The ritual to unlock an Aura involves pushing a bit of the awakener's own Aura – their Od, technically – into the recipient to jumpstart the process, not too dissimilarly from how Magic Circuits might normally be activated. The details are more complicated, obviously, but the ritual I designed was built from that simple starting block. The magic resistance granted by having active Circuits is enough to overwhelm this foreign Od easily and halt the process – not to mention that Aura, as the manifestation of the soul, would interact poorly with the Magic Circuits that reside within a Magus' soul and are specifically made to channel prana."

"Poorly? How do you mean?" Rin asked.

"Well, assuming you did manage to get the process to work in the first place, that person's Aura would be hyper-concentrated just above the physical manifestation of that person's Circuits," he explained. "So, in Shirou's case, for example, his Aura would trace a jagged cage over where his Circuits are spread through his body. The concentration would make those areas incredibly defensive, but the defense would be full of holes and it wouldn't cover his entire body. Not to mention that with all his Od being concentrated outside of his body as a defensive barrier, he wouldn't be able to use his Magecraft – it's definitely possible that his Semblance would be something similar to his Tracing, but it could just as well be something completely different."

"So, even assuming it was possible to awaken his Aura in the first place," Rin summarized, "It would be like wearing a wire-frame suit of armor instead of being covered in solid plates like most Aura users, and it could potentially lock away his most powerful tools."

Ozpin smiled and nodded along. "That's correct. If only all my students grasped things as quickly as you."

Rin preened under the praise. "Of course, that raises the question of _you,_" she said pointedly. "If you started as a Magus, and Magic Circuits are a part of the soul that materializes every time you reincarnate, then you should have Magic Circuits instead of Aura, right?"

Ozpin smiled wryly. "Very astute, and for a time, yes, you would have been correct. No longer, however. My magnum opus, Aura, was not discovered without a price. It was only by using the powers of the Relics that I was able to re-shape my own soul – turning my own Magic Circuits into the first manifestation of Aura."

Rin paled. The idea of losing her Circuits, by her own hand no less… it would be anathema to any Magus.

"It was a gamble, perhaps the biggest I've ever made, but I was confident that it would work – and I think it was worth it." For a moment, a hint of sadness crossed his features. "My Circuits are far from the greatest sacrifice I've made in the fight against Salem," he finished somberly.

"Professor Ozpin…" Rin started, uncharacteristically hesitant. "At the risk of turning this interview into something a little more serious than it was originally intended to be, do you mind if I ask you one last question?"

Ozpin let out a sigh. His posture slumped, almost imperceptibly. "Very well. Ask away."

It made Rin a bit sheepish to ask, but she did so anyways. "Professor… you chose to describe the users of Aura as Mystic Codes. I have to ask, now that I have the complete picture… You could have explained it in terms of a Marble Phantasm, and gone into detail about how a Semblance is essentially the will of the natural soul imposing its viewpoint onto the world. If you were willing to stretch, you could have even described it as a limited form of a Reality Marble, considering that's probably something a lot of our viewers are more familiar with. So, why…?"

"Why choose to make an analogy to an inanimate object, instead? A _tool_ for magecraft, instead of a living being?" Ozpin finished for her sadly.

Rin nodded.

Ozpin turned his head away from Rin, locking his eyes on a spot _just _to the left of where the imaginary camera was filming them from. Considering that it didn't actually exist, where he chose to look was actually an incredibly accurate guess — but not quite on the money.

That's what Oz was good at, after all. Making guesses. Usually close ones, but… not always right.

In any other setting, he would probably have deflected — it was an easy enough question to do so with. He certainly wouldn't bare his soul, pun slightly intended, the way he was about to. But, after all… this wasn't even canon. Nobody, anywhere, would ever know what he had to say on the matter. So… he had might as well be honest.

"I've made more mistakes than anyone else in the history of Remnant ever has," he began. "Everybody makes them, I know. But… most people only have a single lifetime to make them in."

What was left of his composure began to deteriorate.

"It is… unimaginably hard. I mean that, not at all as hyperbole. A normal person literally _cannot _imagine how hard it is, to form relationships that might last for years, decades, an entire lifetime… and then see that person ripped away from you, in the most final of ways. To watch people that you have grown to love die. Over and over again, and to eventually forget their names, their faces."

His eyes, somehow noticing something off, readjusted — landing, this time, slightly off to the fake camera's right — but slightly more on point than they had been before.

"There have been those who have called me… 'manipulative.' More than I can count have cursed my name in their final breath. Still, though... None have ever managed to condemn me more than I already blame myself. With every lifetime that has gone by, met only by loss, I am reminded that everything I have done has been for naught."

His eyes adjusted once more as he finally broke. His eyes began to water ever so slightly, a single tear threatening to slide down his cheek as his gaze fixed onto the exact spot that his nonexistent camera was filming from, locking eyes with his audience.

"I cannot save them. Any of them. I care for each and every student I have ever taught, and to the last I have been forced to see them die."

He took one last breath before releasing it as a rattling sigh.

"It is far easier for me to look at them as tools. Mystic Codes, chess pieces… Whatever the metaphor, it doesn't matter." He closed his eyes as a second tear nearly broke free from his other eye. "Everything I have done has been for the good of humanity, Faunus included. It is far easier for me to write off those that I care for — those that I love — as tools, rather than acknowledge that I am willfully setting them onto a path that I know will only lead to misery and defeat. But… I will not, cannot, stop. Admitting defeat would mean that it all truly had no point."

Rin smiled sadly. "You remind me a lot of someone I know, Professor."

Ozpin regained his composure enough to chuckle lightly. "Is that so? For some reason, I imagine that my own circumstances are rather unique."

"You might be surprised," she said. "Even beyond the silver hair, and being really attractive, for an older man–"

Ozpin spat out his latest sip of cocoa and started to cough.

Rin ignored him and continued. "I know a man who wanted nothing more than to save everyone, who spent his entire life chasing that dream – and then, when he died, he found a way to keep trying anyways. He spent more lifetimes than I can count trying and failing and killing, and eventually grew bitter. He tried to go back in time to kill his younger self before he ever set down that path in the first place."

Ozpin raised an eyebrow. "He was a Wizard too, then? The Second or the Fifth?"

Rin frowned. "Not quite. Gaia was involved, as was the Holy Grail…"

The ancient professor sighed. "Regardless. So, is that to be my end as well? Eventually I will break?"

Rin began to smile again, which swiftly grew into a smirk. "I doubt it. He went back in time, but when he found his younger self… Well, let's just say that really strange things tend to happen around Shirou."

Ozpin's eyebrows shot back up at the implications.

Rin nodded with a laugh. "Exactly. Trust me, if he's crazy enough to survive an assassination attempt by the time-traveling semi-immortal Heroic Spirit-Counter Guardian of himself and still manage to hold onto his dream, convince said Counter Guardian that the dream wasn't that wild after all, and then get himself accidentally sent to another dimension for the sole purpose of saving people… I wouldn't give up hope just yet, Professor Ozpin."

Ozpin allowed himself to smile faintly. "Thank you, Miss Tohsaka. I don't believe I shall."

"Well, that concludes our interview for the day!" Rin exclaimed, back to her usual cheer. "Let's have a round of applause for Professor Ozpin!"

The dojo was silent.

"It's a shame this isn't canon," Ozpin said. "I would have liked to remember this."

Rin shrugged and smiled. "Just because it's not canon doesn't mean things won't bleed through. After all, this _is _Carnival Phantasm, not to mention fanfiction. This interview is at _least _the third step away from canon. Goodnight, everybody!"

Ozpin frowed, trying to avoid having an existential crisis.

The curtains fell.

o-o-o-o-o

**Thank you all for reading! Please send me a message or a review!**


	17. Chapter 17

Ozpin had to admit that when he finally tracked down the establishment that this mysterious Lancer worked at, a strange restaurant-bar-cafe hybrid called 'Ahnenerbe', he was expecting to find a rather subdued gathering.

After all, one of his students had been kidnapped, and several others had been forced into a hostage situation. They'd also been a part of an actual battle with a group of known terrorists, which was typically a source of some concern for those unaccustomed to such things.

Walking through the door, however, he was met by a scene of congenial chaos.

He was only a few minutes late. Fashionably, or at least dramatically so, he would insist if anyone pressed the issue, rather than admit he'd gotten slightly lost. After all, it was rare that he couldn't find a place in Vale, after having lived there for multiple lifetimes. Still, though, it was quite possible that he'd been told to arrive somewhat later than everyone else, because it seemed the party was in full swing.

Blake, the student that he was most worried about in terms of trauma, was currently moaning, her eyes rolling back into her head in a way that was downright inappropriate for him to even be witnessing.

The reason for this, presumably, was the platter of artfully arranged, colorful hors d'oeuvres that occupied the center of their table. Shirou, wearing a plain brown apron over his usual clothes, stood beside the table bearing a proud grin as his classmates sampled his fare.

Interestingly enough, Nora and Yang seemed uncharacteristically cautious of the food. Ozpin's eyes flicked back over to appraise it once more, and recognized it as a relatively rare Mistralian delicacy – Sushi, he believed it was called.

Still, even those initially wary of consuming raw fish were quickly caving to the pleasantly surprised, delighted, or downright ecstatic expressions of those who had already sampled it.

Ozpin smiled. To all appearances, this was simply a gathering of friends. Truly, the ability of youth to overcome ordeals was extraordinary.

A short distance away, seated at a high table near the bar, Qrow watched the gathered teenagers with fondness as he sipped at a massive mug of beer. Opposite the table, a man wearing a waiter's uniform with dark blue hair was laughing uproariously. Rather unprofessionally, he too had a large drink in front of him.

"Ozpin! Glad you could make it!" Qrow called over to him with a wide smile.

Gods, how rare it was to see him so happy these days.

"Glad to be here," he said with a smile of his own.

"Good evening, Headmaster," Weiss said politely as she straightened up in her seat. The other teenagers offered similar sentiments as he moved to take a seat with the other two adults.

Shirou met them at their table, with a fresh plate of sushi. Ozpin spared a second to give them a more appreciative once-over — even taking into consideration that the boy had special allowance from the school's cooks to use its kitchen, he was still impressed by how professional the food appeared.

"Today's menu is freshly caught fish courtesy of Lancer and Mr. Branwen here, with some assistance by Ms. Belladonna," Shirou said with a small bow. "I hope you enjoy it."

Ozpin nodded his thanks as Qrow burst out laughing. "I tell you, Oz, this kid is great. You ever even seen food like this before?" he asked before popping one of the bite-sized pieces into his mouth with his fingers.

"A few times, yes," Ozpin admitted with a small smile.

Shirou's eyes visibly widened in delighted surprise, and with a muted flash of blue light he presented a pair of thin straight sticks. "Really? It's a dish from my homeland."

Ozpin took the chopsticks and deftly used them to try a piece for himself. "As excellent as your reputation would suggest, Mr. Emiya," he said after a few moments savoring it. "It is interesting, isn't it, how similar different cultures can be?"

He could see that the boy understood what he meant, and Shirou smiled. "It is. I was pleasantly surprised when Ren, Blake, and even Pyrrha all asked for chopsticks as well."

"Shirou! More!"

The boy turned to see Ruby waving around an empty plate, backed by several emphatic nods from the others.

"Excuse me for a moment," Shirou said with another bow before smiling back at his friends and heading off towards the kitchen.

"Eh, I prefer the more direct approach," the blue-haired man chuckled, twirling a fork between his fingers before spearing a piece for himself.

"You must be Lancer, then? I've been looking forward to meeting you," Ozpin offered with a polite nod.

"Sure am," Lancer confirmed as he took another huge swig of his beer. "Qrow's told me a bit about you too, actually."

"All good, I hope?"

"Depends on what you consider good," Lancer responded with a wolfish smile, looking the headmaster up and down. His eyes lingered on Ozpin's casual yet firm grasp on his cane. "But in my case, I think so. I've been thinking of being a little more… active, recently. You know, for a while, I actually thought I might just be content trying to live a peaceful life."

Qrow snorted. "Yeah, right. People like us _can't _live peaceful lives."

Lancer laughed again. "Just something about the thrill of the fight, isn't there?"

Qrow nodded, and Ozpin chuckled as well. "While I'm a bit past those days myself, I understand completely. If you're a friend of Qrow's, you're a friend of mine – and if you're looking for… _exciting_ work, I'm sure I'd be able to help."

It wasn't quite so clear-cut as that, of course, but a small gesture of trust went a long way. Besides, over the years Ozpin had learned that it was wise to keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and those you were unsure of closest of all.

"I think I might just take you up on that, Headmaster," Lancer nodded, then smirked. "Been a bit too long since I've had a decent fight," he said as he nudged Qrow with an elbow.

Qrow laughed at the friendly insult. "I'm going to pretend you're talking about those Grimm the other day and not me. I swear, Oz, you should see this guy fight. It's something else."

"Full of praise today, aren't you Qrow?" Ozpin said, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, he's not wrong on either count. I am pretty good, if I do say so myself, and even I can't deny the kid's a genius in the kitchen," Lancer said as he deftly pierced another piece of sushi.

"Oh? You speak of him with a certain amount of familiarity," Ozpin asked with the perfect amount of idle curiosity.

"Sure, sure," Lancer agreed easily. "We go way back. You know how it is."

He didn't, really. "Of course."

He'd been hoping for a bit more information than that. Was he implying...

Unfortunately, Shirou had returned with a fresh platter of food for his friends and settled down amongst them, so it was probably time for the actual purpose of the meeting.

Lancer obviously was thinking along the same lines, because he stood up and clapped his hands to gather their attention. "So! I'm glad you're all enjoying the food as much as I am, but I invited you all here for a reason, right?"

Weiss cleared her throat, always happy to take on a position of responsibility. "Ahem. Yes, we've put off discussing several rather important matters for a variety of reasons, but now that we're all gathered here we should begin. I was thinking we might start with a general debrief of what exactly happened, considering that some of us didn't get there until after it was over."

Ozpin nodded as he pulled a thermos from his jacket. "An excellent idea, Ms. Schnee. I take it that everyone here is already aware of the broad strokes, but for the sake of completeness… Ms. Belladonna did some independent study, which led her to the scene of a crime in progress. Members of the White Fang were stealing a shipment of SDC Dust, aided by notorious criminal Roman Torchwick and two unidentified accomplices. Thanks to the heroic actions of her teammates, as well as one Ms. Polendina, nobody was injured and many members of the White Fang are now in custody," he summarized as politely as he could. "Does anyone have anything important to add?"

Shirou nodded, a small frown forming. "I haven't brought it up yet, but Pyrrha, did you see the weapon Roman's partner was using?"

Pyrrha's brows furrowed as she concentrated. "It all happened so fast. A dagger, right?"

Blake gasped in recognition even as Shirou shook his head. "Not quite. A kitchen knife."

"You mean… like the one Cardin had?" Ruby asked nervously.

"You're not saying he got loose and is working with Torchwick, are you?" Yang asked.

"Yeah, like Cardin's. Not the same one, though." Shirou looked towards Ozpin.

He took a large gulp of cocoa before steepling his fingers on the table in front of him. "I know you all agreed to keep it a secret, but am I correct in assuming that Team RVBY knows of the matters we discussed in my office?"

"Hah! Shirou was right, the headmaster _did_ expect me to tell them!" Ruby mumbled to Weiss.

Nora's eyes lit up with excitement. "You mean that Shirou is secretly an interdimensional alien warrior from the future who was sent here on a magical quest to save the world by an ancient relic of desire?!"

Qrow, who just so happened to be taking a massive gulp of his drink at that moment, promptly spat it out all over himself and the table.

Oh, right… not _everyone _had been fully briefed.

Lancer burst out into laughter, as much at Qrow staring sadly down at his now beer-soaked clothing as Nora's statement. "Really, kid? _That's_ what you told them?"

Shirou sighed. "No, it's not."

Ozpin took in Lancer's reaction – amusement, not surprise. Interesting – and just like that, the pieces fell together. "So, you arrived on Remnant alongside Shirou and the Relic, I take it?" he guessed.

Lancer crossed his arms behind his head. "Well, it had to come out eventually, I suppose. Yeah, I hitched a ride on the Grail with the kid."

Qrow made a choking noise. "You're an interdimensional alien? And – so is my niece's teammate? _What _in the _fu–"_

"Hey, hey, interdimensional maybe, but definitely not an alien," Lancer protested.

"Arguable," Shirou noted. "You aren't entirely human, after all."

"Shirou!" Blake gasped, hurt clear in her eyes. "Faunus are not aliens!"

"That's not what I meant!" Shirou protested hastily. "Of course not. Lancer's not even a Faunus!"

Her eyes narrowed in confusion, and turned to Lancer. "But he told me…"

"I said I was something _close,_ not that I was one," Lancer said with a smirk. "There's a reason they called me the Hound of Ulster, after all."

"What did you mean, then, Shirou?" Pyrrha asked.

"Well… Lancer is only half-human."

Almost everyone looked to Lancer, the obvious question left unsaid.

Lancer leaned back in his chair, looking smug. "Well, I don't like to brag."

"Liar," Qrow muttered.

"But yeah, the kid's right. I'm a demigod."

The room was silent.

"Do you all not have those here?" Lancer asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Do you mean to tell me that you're half-god?" Ozpin asked incredulously.

Lancer nodded. "Yep. Ireland's Child of Light, son of Lugh, at your service."

"The… God of Light. Is your father."

He nodded again.

Ozpin turned slowly to Qrow, who still looked dumbfounded. "Somehow, your Semblance is to blame for this," he ruthlessly accused.

Qrow slowly brought his mug up to his mouth and silently chugged the rest of his beer. When it was gone, he nodded once, and then wandered off towards the bar.

Ozpin sighed. "Mr. Emiya, how is it that you came to know the son of the God of Light?" he asked politely.

"Oh, uh, he kind of killed me one night when I was at school, for pretty much no reason. But it's okay, because I didn't die."

Ozpin blinked.

"I said I was sorry," Lancer grumbled.

"And then he tried to kill me again… but, you know, it always seemed like he was the one who would get killed more often than not."

Everyone continued to stare incredulously, so Shirou nervously chuckled and continued. "Well, eventually he started to work part-time at a fish stand, and they had a really good deal on salmon, so I invited him over for dinner, and he and my guardian got along really well…"

"_What?!" _Weiss finally yelled, unable to stand it any more, and putting to voice what basically everyone was thinking.

"Why am I even surprised?" Pyrrha asked softly, shaking her head in resignation and rubbing at her temples. "This always happens. Why does this _always _happen?"

"You know what?" Ozpin asked. "I think this meeting may have gotten a little out of hand. Lancer, I'd be delighted to discuss this further with you at a later point in time."

"Sounds good to me," Lancer agreed, and stood to refill his own glass.

"Maybe a short break would be in order?" Ozpin suggested.

Shirou nodded. "I'll… go make some more food," he said awkwardly, walking purposefully back towards the kitchen.

"Rubes?" Yang asked.

"Yeah?"

"Your team is weird."

"Yeah."

Nora tapped her chin with a finger, staring thoughtfully up at the ceiling. "I'm a little confused."

"I think we all are, Nora," Ren sighed.

"If I'm getting this right…" she continued, "Shirou is frenemies with a demi-dog, which is different from a dog Faunus, and he time-traveled here from his alien planet because his guardian tried to kill him, but the Gods sent Lancer after him so they could continue their eternal duel of friendship across time and space?"

Lancer stared blankly at her for a moment, before once more bursting into uncontrollable guffaws.

Yang patted her gently on the head, making her giggle, and smiled weakly. "Good try, honey."

Ruby shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts, before speaking. "I think the problem is that we keep getting stuck on silly things, like _details, _and what should and shouldn't be possible," she said slowly.

"And what do you suggest, then?" Weiss asked with a frown.

"It's really simple, if you think about it," she said, building up steam and starting to smile. "Shirou and Lancer are just two people from a faraway place. Shirou's really good at fighting. He also makes awesome cookies." Her cheeks grew slightly pink, but her sincerity didn't waver at all. "He's a really great guy, who's saved all our lives at least once, and he's, umm… kind of friends with Lancer, who is also pretty good at fighting, I guess. And, uhh, that's about it, right?" she trailed off happily.

"Well said," Ozpin acknowledged. "Details… they can often get in the way of what is truly important."

It was nonsense, but he made sure to put some 'mysterious wisdom' into his voice as he said it, and most of the students nodded along hesitantly.

"I just… you know what? Never mind," Weiss said as she threw her hands into the air in exasperation. "Ruby's right. None of this makes sense, and it's not going to make sense no matter how much I try to think about it, so I might as well just accept it."

o-o-o-o-o

Before long, Shirou returned with another platter of sushi. He was pleased to see that everyone seemed to have calmed down a bit, even Qrow, although that might have been due to the fact that Lancer had filled his friend's mug with something quite a bit harder than beer judging by the smell.

Noticing Shirou's return, and casually using his chopsticks to maneuver a fresh piece of sushi into his mouth, Ozpin nodded contentedly. "Now, before we got sidetracked, I believe we still had more to discuss regarding the recent robbery."

Pyrrha nodded. "Shirou, is there anything else you can tell us about the owner of the knife? I unfortunately didn't have much time to observe him myself," she finished with a light blush, clearly disappointed in herself.

"The knives… they're tough to read," Shirou admitted. "The purpose of the knife itself kind of overrides whatever else I would usually be able to read off it, considering the owner hasn't really used it for much. All I can tell you is that whoever he is, he really wanted to become a Huntsman, and he's used it to kill a few Grimm. I have no idea how someone like that fell in with Roman's crowd, though."

"Still, more than we had," Ozpin allowed.

"Honestly, it was Roman's other accomplice that worried me more," Shirou said with a frown.

"The one who hid them behind an illusion?" Ruby asked.

Shirou shook his head slowly, concentrating. "No… not quite. I wouldn't call it an illusion – Pyrrha, remember how it shattered when my arrow hit it?"

Pyrrha nodded, frowning. "It fell apart like broken glass."

"Yeah. It was solid, until it broke. Real. It wasn't just an image of them, it was… a copy. A flimsy one, sure, but…" he paused for a moment before Projecting another chopstick and displaying it to the table. "If you look at this, feel it – even if you smelled it, or tasted it I suppose, it would be indistinguishable from normal wood, but it's not. It's just a construct made of prana – or Aura, if you prefer, held into shape until it breaks."

He snapped it, and everyone watched as it dissolved into blue light.

"You're saying… that her Semblance was something like yours," Ren said slowly.

"Yeah, I guess I am," Shirou said with a frown. "I suppose my Projections are more focused on quality, making the recreations as faithful to the original as possible, which makes them a lot more durable. Hers, though, are more versatile, from what I could see."

"That's why you fell for the trick," Ren continued. "Your Semblance lets you analyze weaponry at a glance, but her solid illusions… registered to your senses as the originals?"

Shirou nodded with a grimace. "Until they shattered, they seemed real. Almost like… afterimages? The transition between them and the illusion was seamless, and I didn't even realize it had happened until it shattered, and suddenly they were somewhere else."

"A powerful Semblance," Ozpin mused. "Did you manage to glean any other information about her?" Ozpin asked.

Shirou frowned again. "Yeah, her name is Neo Politan. And as annoying as it is that her Semblance is impossible to see through, what really worries me is what I managed to read off her weapon, Hush. She's good. Better than Roman, by a lot. And… don't let her appearance fool you. She's brutal. She's killed a lot of people."

Blake shuddered.

"To be honest, I probably could have taken down their Bullhead after I saw Blake get pushed out into the water, but… it could have been another illusion. I didn't want to take the shot until I knew for sure she was safe, and by then they were gone," Shirou said, a bit of frustration seeping into his voice.

"I believe you made the right call," Ozpin said. "Even if you had been certain Ms. Belladonna was out of the line of fire, it would have been dangerous to break the deal you had brokered. Mr. Torchwick, while a criminal, still has some code of honor, and to break a truce with him once your terms have been fulfilled would only ensure that in any future engagement, he would have no incentive to make such deals."

"Why did he agree to let me go in the first place?" Blake asked softly.

"For much the same reasons, I would assume," Ozpin explained. "One does not become Vale's most wanted criminal and remain free as long as he has without some amount of intelligence. An encounter that ends with all of my students safe and him still at large is, if not perfect, an acceptable outcome." His eyes narrowed slightly. "He knows that had he caused any lasting harm, or if he had kept a hostage, there would be nothing that could save him from Beacon's wrath – nor my own."

"Just simple self-preservation, then… Yeah. That fits with the sense I got from his weapon," Shirou agreed. "Well, that's all I have for now, I suppose."

"Very well, then." Ozpin took a moment to meet each student's eyes in turn, taking a deep breath. "Students. I would be remiss in my duties as Headmaster if I did not point out that your actions were exceedingly reckless, and quite dangerous. The teachers at Beacon are here to support you, and you should have come to _us_ rather than attempt to take this on yourselves."

_Stick… _

He paused just long enough for his words to sink in, allowing their collective nervousness to grow. He waited until some of them began to start fidgeting before he cracked a small smile and allowed the aura of strictness to evaporate.

"That said, however, I've always preferred to leave punishments to Glynda. _Well done._ I see within _all_ of you the mark of true Huntsmen and Huntresses. Impressive intelligence gathering. The drive to protect your friends, and all of Vale. Skill enough to combat a professional-level enemy, and come out none the worse for wear. Well done indeed."

_And carrot._

Smiles were growing, now, all the more relieved for having replaced the fear of punishment. Ruby let out a small cheer, and even Blake was grinning shyly.

"In fact… thanks to your teams exposing this crime, new information has come to light that I find quite worrying. It appears that this attack, and the recent string of robberies beforehand, may not have been motivated by simple greed."

He leaned forward slightly, ensuring that he had all of them hooked on his every word. "I believe that there may be more at stake here than just Dust. Vale's Most Wanted working with the White Fang? Military hardware to support a simple robbery? No stolen Dust resurfacing at all? No, something is going on here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it. However…"

He glanced once more at the rapt faces of the children around him. "My teachers have precious little free time to investigate such matters. I have my suspicions as to what is going on here, but I need people I can trust to fully confirm them."

Well, that was bending the truth a little. He _was_ suspicious, of course, but he had no real guesses as to what was actually happening. Millennia spent alive had finally taught him not to make frivolous assumptions. Still, he was sure that _something_ was afoot, and he had long since learned that appearing to hold all the cards instilled a certain amount of trust.

And, indeed, he was already having an effect. Ruby's eyes were practically sparkling in anticipation. Shirou had settled into a look of intense determination. Nora seemed fairly excited at the prospect of future violence, if he was reading her right, and Blake's expression had lit up at the mention of the White Fang. Still, though, it would not do to make them feel _too_ secure.

"Of course, such trust is not to be handed out lightly. If you all accept my proposal, I will need your solemn word that there will be no repeats of recent events. I will expect a clear line of communication at _all times, _if you are active in the field – no more rushing into dangerous scenarios without ample backup, and certainly not without notifying me beforehand."

Ruby leaned forwards over the table. "You can count on us," she declared.

Not for the first time, he felt vindicated in assigning the fifteen-year-old to be the leader of her team. The easy confidence and certainty in her voice, and the way her simple words seemed to resonate amongst her peers – Ozpin had met seasoned politicians with only a fraction of Ruby's raw charisma.

"I do believe I can," he agreed with a smile, ignoring the conflicted expression that flashed across Qrow's features for a moment.

o-o-o-o-o

"Remind me again why you insisted on coming with me?" Blake asked with a sigh.

"Remind me again what happened last time I let you wander off into Vale alone?" Yang countered easily with a teasing smile, walking side by side with her partner through Vale's commercial district. "Besides, Ozpin _just _told us yesterday that we always needed to have backup."

"Great," Blake huffed. "So now I have to have an escort every time I go to meet with a friend in town."

Yang laughed. "I might just continue to grace you with my presence for a while, yes."

Blake shook her head, but she couldn't hide the hint of a small smile.

"I don't mind the company, really," Blake admitted after a moment. "But… well, would you mind if I talked to my friend alone for a bit? It's kind of personal."

"Ooh? _Personal,_ eh?" Yang pounced, her grin widening. "And here I thought this was just a _business meeting." _

"It is!" Blake protested, her pale cheeks reddening slightly. "Just… personal business."

Yang paused, confused. "Wait, are we still talking about what Ozpin asked us to do? I thought you said this guy was kind of your informant."

Blake nodded. "Yeah, that too. But, well, I also have some more personal stuff to talk with him about, and this is probably my last chance to do it."

Yang's smile returned with a vengeance, and she shot her partner an exaggerated wink. "_Gotcha."_

"I really doubt that you do," Blake muttered. "Well, here we are," she said as they approached a storefront with large glass windows.

Tukson's Book Trade: Home to Every Book Under the Sun.

The bell above the door tinkled as she pushed it open and stepped inside, just in time to hear–

"It's false advertising!"

Tukson, standing behind his counter, visibly perked up as he saw Blake and Yang enter the store, the blonde peering around curiously – and Blake narrowing her eyes suspiciously at his other two customers.

"Oh, Blake! Good to see you. I'll be with you in a moment," the owner called over.

"Is something wrong?" Blake asked cautiously, eying the two strangers.

Closest to the door was a tall boy, a little older than her, wearing a lightly armored combat suit the same shade of grey as his hair. Leaning over the counter, a girl with light green hair and dark skin turned to smile at them, revealing her bright red eyes. Her rather revealing outfit, brown leather pants and a white and olive top, was complimented by a pair of weapons holstered at the small of her back.

There was no mistaking that style of dress. Huntsmen, or at least students.

"Oh, no, not at all," the girl explained with a laugh. "We were just a little disappointed with the selection here, is all."

"I've never found any problems with it," Blake frowned.

"Ah, well, it's not a big deal," the boy in grey said with a wave of his hand. "I'm more interested in the comics section anyways."

Yang snorted, walking over to peruse the comics as well. "Heh, me too. So, you two must be here for the festival?"

The two foreign students shot each other a quick glance, before the boy's eyes flicked back and gave Yang a slower once-over. He slowly broke out into a cocky grin. "Sure are. Is this a first look at my competition?"

Yang matched him with an identical appraisal and smirk, placing her hands on her hips and pushing her chest out a little further. "_This_ is your first look at the champion," she boasted.

The boy raised an eyebrow, drawing himself up as well. "Oh? Can't wait to see you back that up in the ring, hot stuff," he retorted with a wink.

"Ugh, Mercury. Please stop embarrassing me," the green-haired girl spoke up again. She turned back to Blake with a wry smile. "You're a regular customer here then, I take it? I didn't mean to offend – it just reminded me of my favorite shop back home, but it is a little smaller, so I suppose it can't be helped that it might not have as many books as I'm used to."

Blake's expression softened a little at that. "Ah… yes. Sorry, I can be a little defensive of the places I like. And I'm sorry about my partner, as well – she's just full of hot air," she said as she looked over to where Yang and Mercury were still posturing at each other.

The girl laughed again. "Mine's the same way. I'm Emerald, by the way. We're from Haven."

"I'm Blake, and that's Yang," she replied. "Will we be seeing you around Beacon, then?"

"We'll be moving in soon," Emerald confirmed. "We should probably be going, anyways – we just wanted to do a little sightseeing before we settled in. Nice to meet you! Come on, Mercury," she said as she walked towards the door.

"Heh. See you around, Yang," the boy said with a little wave before turning and sauntering after his partner.

"They seemed nice," Yang said as her eyes lingered on Mercury's retreating backside, the door swinging shut behind them.

"Hmm," Tukson grumbled in response, almost a growl.

"This is why I don't bring you places," Blake said flatly.

"Hey, it's not every day a guy can keep up with me when I'm flirting," Yang replied without a hint of remorse.

Blake didn't deign to respond. "Tukson, this is my partner, Yang."

"A pleasure," he said curtly, before sighing. "Sorry, I'm still a little on edge. Those two gave me a weird feeling — I'm glad to see you, really. So, you must be here about your book?"

Blake flinched, drawing Yang's eye. "Hmm? What book?"

"Nothing!" Blake answered far too swiftly. "Uh, we can talk about that later. I was actually here about the docks…"

Tukson sighed, a mixture of sadness and frustration. "I heard about that on the news. You…"

"You were right," Blake cut him off. "It was reckless, and I shouldn't have tried to handle it by myself. I've… heard it all, believe me."

Tukson blinked. "Well, that's good, then. I'm glad you made it out alright."

"_But…_"

He sighed again.

"Well, we talked about it with the headmaster, and because it's important, he agreed to let us keep looking into it as long as we do it responsibly," she finished with a hopeful smile.

"Of course he did," Tukson grumbled.

"So, will you help us?"

He glanced at Yang, who gave him a small wave.

"She can be trusted, I promise."

"You're not the first shady information dealer I've worked with," Yang chimed in with a wink and a wide smile, miming closing a zipper over her mouth.

"I'll tell you what I can," he said slowly, "but this will have to be the last time. My fake papers came through early once my guy heard that the heat was turning up — I've got my bags packed and a ticket out of Vale for tonight."

Blake smiled sadly. "I'll miss you, but I'm glad."

"I'll miss you too, kid. And the shop. It's not much, but it's… it _was _home."

"So… what can you tell us about the White Fang, and Torchwick?"

He grimaced. "You're probably not going to like this. Torchwick…"

Blake's eyes narrowed.

"Well, he's the guy who's been helping me get out."

"_What?!"_

"Wait, listen," he stopped her, raising his hands defensively. "He approached me — he figured out I was trying to leave, and he didn't rat me out to the Fang. He offered to help, no strings attached."

"Helping people out of the goodness of his heart doesn't seem like his usual style," Yang noted as she crossed her arms.

"I know. I tried to figure out what his angle was… and I think he's using me as a test."

"A test for what?" Blake asked.

Tukson sighed again. "To see whether getting out is possible, I think. If he was loyal to the White Fang, he would have just turned me over — hell, he could have done that anyways just as a way to build trust with them. But he didn't — and when I met him, he mentioned his 'employer' a few times."

"He's not the head of the snake…" Blake murmured in understanding.

Tukson nodded. "Someone else is forcing him to work with them — and I'm pretty sure the same is true in reverse. Someone powerful enough to control Torchwick _and _the White Fang."

Yang let out a slow whistle. "And even Vale's best thief isn't sure if he could get away clean? That's… serious."

"And you're just going along with it? Even though it might not work? Even though he's using you as some kind of guinea pig?" Blake asked with a hint of accusation.

"I don't really have a choice, Blake," he said tiredly.

"So, how does this help us?" Yang asked. "We still don't know what they're planning, or why they needed all that Dust."

"No, it's definitely useful…" Blake mused as she organized her thoughts. "They aren't working together because they want to be, and Roman is looking for a way out… we can play them off each other. And if he gets a chance to cut and run, he probably will."

"Hmm, I guess. And I guess we know that we still have to be on the lookout for someone else, whoever's pulling the strings?"

"And, if whoever that is is controlling them through fear, if we can prove that we're the more dangerous group, they might defect as well," Blake continued excitedly.

"...Alright, well, that might be a little extreme," Yang said with a chuckle.

Blake blushed. "It's worth keeping in mind."

"Agreed." Yang turned back to Tukson. "Anything else you can offer us?"

He shook his head slowly. "I've been a little out of the loop for a while," he admitted, "But… there is a rally soon. Rumor has it there's going to be an important speaker – if you can get inside, it might be a good way to learn more. I'll tell you where and when – _if _you _promise _me that you'll do it safely, with plenty of backup in case things go wrong."

The two girls shared a quick grin. "Lay it on us, chief," Yang said, cracking her knuckles.

The burly Faunus pulled out a sheet of paper, scrawling a quick address and date, and then reached beneath the counter to produce a binder that he put the paper inside of. "Here. And before I forget, this is all the paperwork for your book, plus a first edition proof-of-concept," he said with a smile as he tapped the cover of the binder with a smile. "Should hit the shelves in a couple months. You'll just need to be in contact with the publisher about an account to wire the profits to."

Blakes eyes lit up, as did her cheeks. "Thank you! Thank you so much!" she exclaimed as she grabbed the binder and hugged it to her chest.

"Not a problem."

"Blake, look, a sushi stand!" Yang suddenly yelled, pointing towards the windows.

"What? Where?" Blake asked, spinning towards the street before her mind even realized what her body was doing.

"_Yoink!"_ Yang said happily as she snatched the binder out of her distracted partner's hands. She wasted no time in cracking it open and finding the book within. "The Sword of Love…?"

"_Yang! _Give that back!" Blake shrieked, desperately lunging for it as Yang neatly pirhouetted out of the way.

"By _Ebony Nightshade?" _Yang chortled as she turned and sprinted out of the store, still holding the book out in front of her.

"_Yaaaaang!_" Blake paused for just a moment in her pursuit to turn back to Tukson, who was smiling at them fondly. "Umm, thank you again for all your help! I promise I'll make things right! Good luck!" She hesitated, clearly wanting to chase after her partner.

"Go on, then," Tukson said with a wave, and in an instant the girl was out the door and sprinting down the street.

He walked far more sedately after her, sparing one last look through the windows at their swiftly shrinking forms, before he flipped the sign on his door from 'open' to 'closed.'

"Good luck to you too, kid. Stay safe."

o-o-o-o-o

**As always, apologies for the wait. This was a very dialogue heavy chapter, which is always more time consuming to write than more fast-paced action scenes for me. Y'all know how it is, work and stuff. **

**As for chapter stuff, Neo has a really interesting Semblance, and there's a lot of divisiveness on how it works. Lots of people say illusions, lots say there's a teleportation aspect involved… the way I'm choosing to interpret it is as hard illusions, which clearly Neo has experimented enough with to be able to replicate invisibility. Aside from being able to use it to change hair color and project illusory (but still solid) clothing, her most common use of it appears to be projecting forward an illusory solid afterimage of herself as her true self splits off from the copy invisibly – almost splitting into two, in essence, until when the afterimage is destroyed and she reappears somewhere else it almost appears like she teleported. **

**Also, several reviewers have mentioned that a lot of things seem to still be happening the same as in canon – I'm admittedly, and obviously, still using a lot of canon scenes as inspiration for plot progression, but mostly for scenes that have no reason to have been butterfly effect'ed away. Hopefully it's still clear how subtle changes are building up – Ozpin has recognized extraordinary growth in his students and rather than, for example, slightly bending the rules so a first year team can take a mission reserved for higher years while still making comments to Glynda about how kids deserve to be kids for as long as they can, has admitted that he's going to accelerate his schedule and start bending rules far more overtly, which also allows him to keep a much tighter handle on their shenanigans, as one example of subtle changes I touched on in this chapter. I'm also trying to provide more reasonable explanations for how the gang always seems to end up in the right place at the right time, in this case through the use of intermediary characters like Tukson – and if that allows me to save his life in the process, all the better. Other changes should keep coming up as the story progresses. **

**And, as always, thank you all so much for continuing to read, and I hope you enjoy! I really appreciate all reviews and private messages!**


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